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Norberto Gramaccini

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Norberto Gramaccini
Norberto Gramaccini

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This chapter is in the book Jacopo Bellini's Book of Drawings in the Louvre

113SuMMARyThe premise of this book was to demonstrate that Jacopo Bellini did not execute the drawings in the Louvre himself (R.F. 1475–1565). Bound together to form a book in the early 1450s, the album was originally intended to attract and educate young students in the art of painting. The idea came from Francesco Squarcione who was devoted to similar projects in humanist Padua, having therefore founded an academy in keeping with the scientific premises estab-lished by the Faculty of Medicine and Philosophy at the University (chapter III). Jacopo Bel-lini, a collector of valuable art objects that were related to his profession (pertinentia pictorie et ad dipingendum) and eager to assume a leading position in the Veneto art world, came into possession of the album probably in the late 1450s through mediation of his son-in-law, Andrea Mantegna, Squarcione’s most prominent pupil. This information is inferred from the correspondence between the Florentine art dealer Angelo Tovaglia and Lodovico Gonzaga (I). The conclusion of this transaction is all too well known: Jacopo Bellini bequeathed the Book of Drawings, together with the rest of his collection, to his wife, Anna Rinversi, who passed it to their son Gentile Bellini in 1471. Gentile and his brother, Giovanni, did not keep Jacopo’s possessions, which were of no use from a professional artistic standpoint, but sold them at a high price. The Louvre Album, the most precious item, probably passed into the possession of the Sultan Mehmed II in 1479.The conclusion that Jacopo Bellini was merely the owner and not the author of the draw-ings is substantiated by a close analysis of the drawings themselves. With respect to style and content, they have little in common with what can be inferred from Jacopo Bellini’s painted œuvre.1 The discrepancy has since been noted, yet, due to Anna Rinversi’s testament, seemed unassailable. This fallacy gave birth to the paradox of an artistic personality that, on the one hand, was deeply rooted in the tradition of the late Gothic period (Gentile da Fabriano, Jan van Eyck) but, on the other, due to the ostensible evidence of the drawings, challenged and finally overcame this very tradition. All of the ensuing conclusions are derived from this initial, fallacious presumption, to the point of subordinating Mantegna himself to the Venetian master. Colin Eisler’s hypothesis that it was the availability of Jacopo Bellini’s draw-ings that “could, in a sense, have made Andrea Mantegna marry Nicolosia for her father’s books” underscores the extent of this factual distortion. What substantiated this theory was, furthermore, the dominant role of Venice. The tremendous success of Venetian Renaissance painting from the late fifteenth century onwards and the characterization of Jacopo Bellini as the “founder of the Serenissima’s renaissance” (Eisler) made it difficult to imagine that an object as fundamentally important as the book of drawings in the Louvre could not be his, its having originated from what is still considered a provincial town today. The error, however, lies in a reverse perspective that tended to mitigate Padua’s role as an intellectual

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113SuMMARyThe premise of this book was to demonstrate that Jacopo Bellini did not execute the drawings in the Louvre himself (R.F. 1475–1565). Bound together to form a book in the early 1450s, the album was originally intended to attract and educate young students in the art of painting. The idea came from Francesco Squarcione who was devoted to similar projects in humanist Padua, having therefore founded an academy in keeping with the scientific premises estab-lished by the Faculty of Medicine and Philosophy at the University (chapter III). Jacopo Bel-lini, a collector of valuable art objects that were related to his profession (pertinentia pictorie et ad dipingendum) and eager to assume a leading position in the Veneto art world, came into possession of the album probably in the late 1450s through mediation of his son-in-law, Andrea Mantegna, Squarcione’s most prominent pupil. This information is inferred from the correspondence between the Florentine art dealer Angelo Tovaglia and Lodovico Gonzaga (I). The conclusion of this transaction is all too well known: Jacopo Bellini bequeathed the Book of Drawings, together with the rest of his collection, to his wife, Anna Rinversi, who passed it to their son Gentile Bellini in 1471. Gentile and his brother, Giovanni, did not keep Jacopo’s possessions, which were of no use from a professional artistic standpoint, but sold them at a high price. The Louvre Album, the most precious item, probably passed into the possession of the Sultan Mehmed II in 1479.The conclusion that Jacopo Bellini was merely the owner and not the author of the draw-ings is substantiated by a close analysis of the drawings themselves. With respect to style and content, they have little in common with what can be inferred from Jacopo Bellini’s painted œuvre.1 The discrepancy has since been noted, yet, due to Anna Rinversi’s testament, seemed unassailable. This fallacy gave birth to the paradox of an artistic personality that, on the one hand, was deeply rooted in the tradition of the late Gothic period (Gentile da Fabriano, Jan van Eyck) but, on the other, due to the ostensible evidence of the drawings, challenged and finally overcame this very tradition. All of the ensuing conclusions are derived from this initial, fallacious presumption, to the point of subordinating Mantegna himself to the Venetian master. Colin Eisler’s hypothesis that it was the availability of Jacopo Bellini’s draw-ings that “could, in a sense, have made Andrea Mantegna marry Nicolosia for her father’s books” underscores the extent of this factual distortion. What substantiated this theory was, furthermore, the dominant role of Venice. The tremendous success of Venetian Renaissance painting from the late fifteenth century onwards and the characterization of Jacopo Bellini as the “founder of the Serenissima’s renaissance” (Eisler) made it difficult to imagine that an object as fundamentally important as the book of drawings in the Louvre could not be his, its having originated from what is still considered a provincial town today. The error, however, lies in a reverse perspective that tended to mitigate Padua’s role as an intellectual

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