Giovanni Bellini, San Giobbe Altarpiece

Giovanni Bellini, who was active for over sixty years, was the artist most instrumental in bringing the Renaissance style to Venice. His monumental San Giobbe Altarpiece is the first surviving example in Venetian art of the type known as a sacra conversazione (“sacred conversation” – scenes of Madonna and child surrounded by saints in a unified space. They do not engage in conversation but rather are shown reading or absorbed in meditation.)

The painted space ends in a fictive apse, which is suffused with a rich yellow light. This is consistent with the Byzantine flavor of the gold mosaic in the half dome behind Mary and Jesus. Enthroned in front of the apse, Mary and Jesus are the focal point of the painting, even though the viewer’s eye level is at the center of the lower frame. As a result, we look up at Mary and Jesus, whose central importance is both literal (in their placement) and symbolic (in their significance).

Saint Francis stands at the left, his head tilted on an angle parallel to the cross of John the Baptist. Reading from left to right, we follow Saint Francis’ left elbow to the right arm of Saint Job. Mary’s raised left arm recedes toward the upward diagonal of Saint Dominic’s book, which repeats the red of her garment. From here, we are led to Saint Sebastian and to the young Saint Louis of Toulouse in his characteristically elaborate robe. The three music-making angels at the foot of the throne are at once a reference to the Trinity and a formal echo of the cross at the back of the throne.

In this altarpiece, Giovanni Bellini lays the groundwork for future developments in High Renaissance Venetian painting. The soft, yellow light playing over the nudes and the chiaroscuro create sensual flesh tones that recur in the work of Giorgione and Titian. Intense colors – especially reds – and textural variations also develop as oil paint becomes the primary medium in Venice. The climate of Venice was not conducive to fresco because of dampness and salt air from the sea. Oil on stretched canvas proved more durable and also allowed for richer, more painterly effects.

Laurie Schneider Adams, Italian Renaissance Art, (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2001), 298.