Art Books : From Bellini to Braque

During a long and prolific career, Giovanni Bellini (early 1430s-1516) oversaw the transition in Venice from the International Gothic style to the High Renaissance style perfected by Titian, his pupil. The succession of Bellini’s masterpieces reveal a suave mastery of color and a profound enthusiasm for landscape that constitute his artistic legacy.

Unlike earlier authors who describe the artist’s life and works in chronological sequence, Rona Goffen, who is Distinguished Professor of Art History at Rutgers, has adopted an unusual, fugal format in GIOVANNI BELLINI (Yale University Press: $60; 355 pp.) . In separate chapters, she traces the evolution of his private devotional images, public altarpieces, portraits, and secular and mythological subjects. Although some redundancy is unavoidable, this strategy highlights the characteristics that are unique in Bellini’s treatment of each genre while emphasizing common trends.

Goffen focuses less on stylistic issues and more on content than her predecessors. Supported by a detailed examination of their iconography, Goffen’s reading of Bellini’s spiritual paintings is especially acute and sensitive. Though she offers a lucid description of the intellectual and social context in which they were created, her discussion of his mythological paintings is more tentative. Although it is possible to quibble over occasional details, this thoroughly documented and generously illustrated volume is written in a manner as accessible as Bellini’s paintings and should be a delight to the amateur and connoisseur alike.

Inspired by a visit to the Spanish Riding School in Vienna and the product of 11 years research, THE ROYAL HORSE AND RIDER: Painting, Sculpture and Horsemanship 1500-1800 (Abaris Books: $59.50; 336 pp.) offers an innovative and fascinating survey of equestrian portraits and monuments created between 1500-1800. Because these images mirror the most distinctive activity of the ruling class, the book also offers new insight into the self-image and ideals of European’s aristocracy.

In a lucid and meticulously documented essay, Walter Leidtke, curator of Dutch and Flemish paintings at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, traces the evolution of the genre in terms of both pictorial style and social significance. To reacquaint most of us with now forgotten subtleties of horsemanship, the book includes a helpful essay on “Riding in the Renaissance and Baroque Period” by Alexander Mackay-Smith, curator and chairman of the board at the National Sporting Library in Middleburg, Va.

Leidtke suggests that equestrian portraits resumed their classical importance during the Renaissance. Antique prototypes were refined conceptually, though not in practice, by Leonardo da Vinci. His ideas, however, provided the basis for the accomplishments of Giambologna and Pietro Tacca, Florentine sculptors active in the second half of the 16th Century. They developed an image of the mounted ruler that matured in the 17th Century into a dynamic symbol of public authority. Giving greatest emphasis to the masterpieces of Rubens, Velazquez, and Van Dyck, Leidtke adds new depth to our understanding of individual paintings while clarifying the artistic relationships between the artists.

A subtext of this discussion is Leidtke’s thesis that “equestrian portraits and monuments of the late 16th and 17th centuries are intimately related in form and meaning to the contemporary art of riding.” Making effective use of prints, especially those recording the “airs” of haute ecole horsemanship that spread from Italy throughout Europe during this period, Leidtke specifically identifies the equine movements depicted in the portraits. These details are given broad significance, especially in his second chapter which analyzes the symbolic connotations of the equestrian portrait. Liedtke’s essay, supported by a rich bibliography, offers new material for interpreting Baroque portraits. It may also serve as a successful model for the integration of social and art history.

Pierre Skira’s STILL LIFE: A History (Skira/Rizzoli: $85; 240 pp.) is a far less successful genre survey. Although this genre, too, dates back to antiquity, it has suffered from relative scholarly neglect in spite of the almost hypnotic appeal exerted by many of the images and the plethora of masterpieces produced by many of our greatest artists. In part, this neglect is due to that fact that the still life--defined by the absence of humanity and focusing largely on the detritus of life--was considered ignoble by the Greeks and occupied the lowest position in the hierarchy of genres formalized by 17th-Century academicians.

Unfortunately this volume fails to fill the void. It does not supersede Charles Sterling’s “Still Life Painting From Antiquity to the Present Time” (1959) which, regrettably, was reprinted in 1981 with only black-and-white illustrations.

Ostensibly tracing the history of the genre from its tentative appearance on the walls of Egyptian tombs to the present, the text meanders on the periphery of narrative, failing to deliver the chronological analysis promised by the title. Instead, the text offers only the prolix ruminations of the author, which fail to suggest the magic, beauty, or significance of the images under consideration. The text is enlivened, however, by occasional vivid descriptions (“the incandescent pears and marmoreal cheese of Nicolaes Gillis”) as well as by seemingly random digressions on various themes. A seven-page excursus on the pomegranate (in which a capricious choice of allusions is undocumented) left me bewildered as I pondered the meaning of such statements as: “Thus the pomegranates, in the ardor of their demonstration, draw from the depths of a dark autism, a nourishing, equivocal action, between the disquieting figure of Hera and the taste of Delights.” Can one blame the translation from the French?

That Skira, a practicing still-life painter, has a passionate enthusiasm for the subject is evident in the way he guides the reader’s eye in a detailed reading of various compositions. Unfortunately, such useful exercises only occasionally interrupt a text hampered by the author’s habit of piling up synonyms and adjectives the way Frans Snyders piles up slaughtered animals.

This book is disappointing because still life, with its long history, deserves more insightful analysis. Although there are now useful studies of the still-life tradition in Italy, France, Spain, Holland, and America, there exists in English no survey incorporating new research scattered in articles and catalogues. Until an appropriate volume appears, however, the curious reader is advised to use Sterling’s text and refer to Skira’s volume only for its gorgeous illustrative material.

Jacqueline and Maurice Guillaud, who became famous in France for their startling and idiosyncratic exhibition installations, have translated their innovations into book format.

RAPHAEL: Grace of an Angel (Guillaud Editions/Clarkson Potter: $100) is the latest in a series devoted to the greatest painters and distinguished by extraordinary reproductions. This volume is devoted to Raphael’s major fresco suites in the Vatican. Except for the brief essay on the conservation history of these rooms by Fabrizio Mancinelli, director of Medieval, Byzantine, and Modern Art department at the Museum of the Vatican, the text is minimal.

The book itself is an exercise in advanced printing technology. Unfortunately, the novelty of the garishly colored dividing pages and diecut windows is quickly wearing. These elements end by distracting from the crisp images which have been otherwise left to speak for themselves. And they, of course, are glorious.

The reproductions on the Guillaud’s distinctive onionskin paper approximate the surface appearance of the frescoes. The reader is left to pore over a multitude of luscious details (although the order of plates is somewhat idiosyncratic) that are otherwise inaccessible except to angels and conservators. For biographical and interpretive information, look elsewhere. This expensive book is useful, however, in facilitating an appreciation for Raphael’s matchless artistry.

The extravagantly illustrated FRANS HALS (Prestel Books/te Neues Publishing: $60; 437 pp.) is the catalogue published in association with a dazzling retrospective exhibition that opened recently at the National Gallery in Washington, D.C. The show travels to London and concludes at the Frans Halsmuseum in Haarlem, where the painter spent his career.

Edited by Harvard professor Seymour Slive, author of the three-volume Hals catalogue raisonne (1970-74) as well as the richly informative entries describing the 86 pictures in the exhibition, the book includes the first English translation of Arnold Houbraken’s biography of the artist (1718), a valuable compilation of 190 documents, and a series of authoritative essays describing his patrons, their clothing, and the artist’s working methods.

Perhaps most interesting for the amateur is the essay by Frances Jowell, which summarizes the critical fortunes of the painter. Though his reputation today rivals that of his younger contemporaries Rembrandt and Vermeer, Hals (1582/3-1666) died in poverty after enjoying continuous patronage during his life. He was quickly forgotten and his paintings relegated to attics when his vigorous brushwork was no longer fashionable. Credit for his rediscovery must go to Theophile Thore, who in the mid-19th Century recognized Hals as “the true predecessor of the realism just beginning to come into fashion”.

Characterized by this critic as an “adroit swashbuckler” who “painted as if fencing,” Hals’ ineffable capacity to capture the “essential vitality of his sitters” and his unrivaled virtuosity in giving form and vibrancy with the merest brush stroke influenced artists as distinct as Manet, Van Gogh, and John Singer Sargent. They were impressed--as we remain today--by the uncanny immediacy of the portraits to which Hals devoted his career, and they emulated Hals’ audacious technique for their diverse purposes.

With ravishing color plates (including a plenitude of details), the appearance of this book is especially welcome today when contemporary artists are experimenting again with painterly representation. In addition to providing a large audience an opportunity to enjoy (vicariously) Hals’ immensely pleasurable paintings, it also provides a focus for studying the techniques of a quintessential master of the loaded brush.

If the museum has sometimes been described as a laboratory, PICASSO AND BRAQUE: Pioneering Cubism (Museum of Modern Art/Little, Brown: $70; 464 pp.) documents what is unquestionably one of the most complex and rigorous experiments ever performed at New York’s Museum of Modern Art. The bulky catalogue is primarily a picture book. Supported by a multitude of documentary photographs, it includes hundreds of color reproductions of the paintings, drawings, sculpture, collage, and papier colle created by Picasso and Braque between 1907-1914. Gathered under the leadership of William Rubin, director emeritus of MoMA’s Department of Painting and Sculpture, they have been brought together for the first time to help answer the myriad questions still surrounding the invention of Cubism, which he describes as “the most passionate adventure in our century’s art.”

Like the exhibition itself, the book provides material for studying the formation of this style and its evolution from Analytic to Synthetic Cubism. Conclusions resulting from the encounter with this material will be published in a subsequent volume containing the proceedings of a seminar conducted by 20 specialists in the period.

Insisting that art historical judgments can be properly drawn only from direct experience with the objects under consideration, Rubin’s introduction merely suggests “starting points for comparing the work of the two artists . . . without attempting to engage prematurely those complex issues that the seminar will confront when the works themselves” are present. The objects themselves are given only minimal labels, but there is a meticulous 108-page “Documentary Chronology” compiled by Judith Cousins.

In one sense, therefore, this is not a book for the timid. Whether elegant or frivolous, the fragile studies and dense finished works that emerged from the intellectual intercourse of Braque and Picasso are intensely thought-provoking and there is in this volume no user-friendly analysis to guide the reader, who is dumped squarely in medias res . However, this strategy has the benefit of providing the adventurous with an opportunity to eavesdrop, as it were, on the brief but immensely fruitful dialogue between two distinct and creative personalities.