impressions, and left their mark in the stately dignity of his later style. This developed slowly during his long life. Bellini died of old age, indeed in his eighty-eighth year, and was buried near his brother, Gentile, in the Church of Ss. Giovanni e Paulo. Outside, under the spacious vault of heaven, stands the Bartolommeo Colleoni, Verrocchio’s monumental statue, which had been among the elevating influences of Bellini’s life and art. After filling the whole of the north of Italy with his influence, he prepared the way for the giant colourists of the Venetian School, Giorgione, Titian, and Veronese.
169. Albrecht Dürer, 1471–1528, Northern Renaissance, German, Paumgartner Altar (Middle panel), 1502–04, Oil on lime panel, 155 × 126 cm, Alte Pinakothek, Munich
The central panel is conceived in the traditional Gothic style but Dürer uses perspective with extreme rigour. It depicts a Nativity, set in an architectural ruin of a palatial building.
170. Piero di Cosimo, 1462–1521, High Renaissance, Florentine School, Italian, Venus, Mars and Cupid, c. 1500, Oil on panel, 72 × 182 cm, Stiftung Staatliche Museen, Gemäldegalerie, Berlin
171. Hieronymus Bosch, c. 1450–1516, Northern Renaissance, Dutch, The Haywain (triptych), c. 1500, Oil on panel, 135 × 100 cm, Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid
The central painting, now supposed to be an illustration of the Flemish proverb, “The world is a haystack; everyone takes what he can grab thereof,” is dominated by a gigantic hay wagon which, according to Jacques Combe, “evok[es] at the same time the late Gothic motif of the procession of pageant, and the Renaissance Triumph… drawn by semi-human, semi-animal monsters and headed straight for hell, followed by a cavalcade of ecclesiastical and lay dignitaries. From all sides of the wagon men scrabble over one another to pull hay from the giant stack. The only heed they take of their fellows is to thrust them out of their way or to raise hands against them. One sticks a knife into the throat of the unfortunate competitor whom he has pinned to the ground.”
Many among the greedy mob wear ecclesiastical garb, indicating Bosch’s attitude that the holy as well as profane are involved in this scavenging. A fat monk sits in a large chair and lazily sips a drink while several nuns do service for him, packing bundles of hay into the bag at his feet. One of his nuns turns to the lure of sexual enticement, symbolised by the fool playing a bagpipe, to whom she offers a handful of hay in hopes of winning his favours.
172. Hans Baldung Grien, c. 1484–1545, Northern Renaissance, German, The Knight, the Young Girl and Death, c. 1505, Oil on panel, 355 × 296 cm, Musée du Louvre, Paris
173. Bartolomeo Veneto, c. 1502–1555, High Renaissance, Venetian School, Italian, Portrait of a Woman, Oil on panel, 43.5 × 34.3 cm, Städelsches Kunstinstitut, Frankfurt
174. Luca Signorelli, c. 1445–1523, High Renaissance, Tuscan School, Italian, Crucifixion, c. 1500, Oil on canvas, 247 × 117.5 cm. Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence
Luca Signorelli
(c. 1445–1523 Cortona)
Signorelli was a painter from Cortona but was active in various cities of central Italy like Florence, Orvieto and Rome. Probably a pupil of Piero della Francesca, he added solidity to his figures and a unique use of light, as well as having an interest in the representation of actions like contemporary artists, the Pollaiuolo brothers.
In 1483, he was called to complete the cycle of frescos in the Sistine Chapel in Rome, which means he must have had a solid reputation at that time. He painted a magnificent series of six frescos illustrating the end of the world and The Last Judgment for the Orvieto Cathedral. There can be seen a wide variety of nudes displayed in multiple poses, which were surpassed at that time only by Michelangelo, who knew of them. By the end of his career, he had a large workshop in Cortona where he produced conservative paintings, including numerous altarpieces.
175. Bernardino Pinturicchio, 1454–1513, Early Renaissance, Italian, Annunciation, 1501, Fresco, Santa Maria Maggiore, Spello
176. Lucas Cranach the Elder, 1472–1553, Northern Renaissance, German, The Crucifixion, 1503, Oil on pine panel, 138 × 99 cm, Alte Pinakothek, Munich
The Crucifixion is a subject derived from an incident described only by St John. When Christ was hanging on the Cross, he saw John and Mary standing near, “He said to his mother, ‘Woman, behold your son!’ Then he said to the disciple, ‘Behold, your mother!’” (John 19: 26f). The compositional scheme of the crucifixion, which was established some 500 years before Cranach, was symmetrical: Christ on the Cross in the centre, Mary to the right of him and John to the left, both turned to face the viewer. This arrangement began to strike Cranach’s contemporaries as too stylised. Cranach moved the Cross from the centre, presented it side-on, and has the two looking up to Christ in such a way that the faces of all the figures are visible. The first hesitant attempt of this kind was made by Albrecht Dürer in a Crucifixion painted in Nuremberg in 1496 for the chapel of the Wittenberg castle. It is believed that Cranach adopted the device from that work.
177. Hieronymus Bosch, c. 1450–1516, Northern Renaissance, Dutch, The Garden of Earthly Delights (central panel of the triptych), c. 1504, Oil on panel, 220 × 195 cm, Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid
178. Albrecht Dürer, 1471–1528, Northern Renaissance, German, Adoration of the Magi, 1504, Oil on panel, 98 × 112 cm, Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence
179. Lucas Cranach the Elder, 1472–1553, Northern Renaissance, German, Rest on the Flight into Egypt, 1504. Tempera on panel, 69 × 51 cm, Stiftung Staatliche Museen, Gemäldegalerie, Berlin
The charming little scene is inscribed in a circle, at the centre of which is the offering of the strawberry. But this cosy little circle is not at all the centre of the painting. Above, on the left and below, it is surrounded by wild nature, and nature in its own way is involved in the concerns of the Holy Family. The clear sky greets them with the smile of the new day. The rising sun imparts a silvery hue to the clumps of grey moss on the branches of a mighty fir-tree which extends protectively towards a melancholy birch that waves its springy branches. The hills, repeating one another, draw the gaze in to the sunny distance, telling Joseph, “Egypt lies there.” The earth is glad to offer Mary a soft carpet of grass sprinkled with flowers. The clear stream bending around the meadow becomes a boundary to protect the fugitives from their pursuers. Nobody before Cranach had painted nature so straightforwardly, as if directly from life. Nobody before him had been able to form such an intimate link between nature and scriptural figures. Nobody managed to animate every little detail so that all of them together breathe in unison. It was not pantheistic rationalisation that expressed itself here, but the primitive instinct aroused in Lucas’s spirit through contact with his native land.
180. Michelangelo Buonarroti, 1475–1564, High Renaissance, Florence, Italian, The Holy Family with the Young St. John the Baptist (The
