Читать книгу A Popular Handbook to the National Gallery, Volume I, Foreign Schools - National Gallery (Great Britain) - Страница 138

Bassano (Venetian: 1510-1592).

Jacopo da Ponte is commonly called Il Bassano or Jacopo da Bassano from his native town, near Venice. His father, Francesco, who was a painter in the school of the Bellini, was his first master; he afterwards studied under Bonifazio at Venice. After a short stay in that city, Jacopo returned to his native town, where he remained for the rest of a long life. "His best works are almost worthy," says Sir F. Burton, "of Titian. They are conspicuous among other qualities for Venetian excellence of colouring – especially in his green, where he exhibits a peculiar brilliancy. Most of his pictures seem at first sight as dazzling, then as cooling and soothing, as the best kind of stained glass; while the colouring of details, particularly of those under high lights, is jewel-like, as clear and deep and satisfying as rubies and emeralds." No. 228 in this Collection has passages which illustrate this point. Jacopo was nearly contemporary with the great Tintoretto, but while the latter was the last of the Venetian painters in the grand style, Bassano after a time devoted himself to simple scenes of country life. His distinguishing place in the history of art is that he was the first Italian painter of genre– a painter, that is, du genre bas, painter of a low class of subjects, of familiar objects such as do not belong to any other recognised class of paintings (as history, portrait, etc.): see, for instance, No. 228, in which the religious subject merely gives the painter an opportunity for a scene of market life. "His pictures were for the inhabitants of the small market-town from which he takes his name, where, besides the gates, you still see men and women in rustic garb crouching over their many-coloured wares; and where, just outside the walls, you may see all the ordinary occupations connected with farming and grazing. Inspired, although unawares, by the new idea of giving perfectly modern versions of Biblical stories, Bassano introduced into nearly every picture he painted episodes from the life in the streets of Bassano and in the country just outside the gates. Another thing Bassano could not fail to do, working as he did in the country and for country people, was to paint landscape. He loved to paint the real country. He was, in fact, the first modern landscape painter" (Berenson: Venetian Painters of the Renaissance, § xxi). "Giovanni Bellini places his figure in the crystal air of an Italian morning; Titian and Tintoretto give us daylight, mighty while subdued; but Bassano throws a lurid grey over his landscape and carries the eye to the solemn twilight spread along the distant horizon. This peculiarity of feature is partly accounted for by the position of the town of Bassano, which is wrapped in an early twilight by the high mountains above it on the west" (Layard's edition of Kugler, ii. 624).

A fine portrait – somewhat recalling Rembrandt in style – of a very refined face. In the vase beside him is a sprig of myrtle. This painter is fond of introducing such vases: see one in 277. In the principal street of Bassano, where the artist was born and, after studying at Venice, continued to live, such vessels may still be seen placed out for sale.