Much like Bruges' recent exhibition comparing Flemish masters with those from Central Europe, the scope of Bozar's new exhibition is ambitious. Venetian and Flemish Masters covers four centuries of paintings ranging from works by Bellini and Van Eyck, through Titian and Rubens, to Jordaens and Canaletto.
The aim is to highlight the influences that these northern and southern artists had on each other. "The exhibition is a major confrontation between two of the biggest schools of European painting - the Venetian and the Flemish schools - which could not have existed without each other," says curator Giovanni Carlo Federico Villa.
Artistic exchanges between north and south were made possible by maritime, commercial and political connections. In the 15th century, the start of the exhibition's timeline, ships from Venice would arrive in the port of Antwerp laden with goods, including paintings, which would be replaced with other artworks for the return journey.
Artists and patrons would also make the long and arduous journey to familiarise themselves with another region and its culture. In these ways, Giovanni Bellini and Rogier van der Weyden came across each other's works, while Peter Paul Rubens is known to have seen the works of Titian and Veronese.
Venice of the north
Adopting a chronological approach, Venetian and Flemish Masters takes you on a journey from the 15th century through to the end of the 18th century. Paintings from the Low Countries, when Antwerp was the financial heart of Europe, are juxtaposed with works from the Republic of Venice, a territory corresponding to the present-day Lombardy-Venetian area centring on Bergamo.
The exhibition starts impressively with Pisanello's "Portrait of Lionello d'Este" (1441), considered to be the world's first modern portrait and described by Bozar as "one of the most famous pictures in all of Italian Renaissance painting". Lionello d'Este, Marchese of Ferrara, is depicted in profile, similar to how a figure would be engraved on a medal. It is perhaps then of little surprise to learn that around this time Pisanello was interested not only in portraiture but also in medal making.
In the same room are portraits from a few decades later by van der Weyden ("Portrait of Philippe de Croy", circa 1460) and Giovanni Bellini ("Portrait of a Young Man, 1475-1480). Instead of depicting their subjects in profile, both artists opt for a three-quarter angle.
Bellini's place in the exhibition is further highlighted through an intervention by contemporary Flemish artist Berlinde De Bruyckere. Visitors are stopped in their tracks when, wandering through a space filled with 15th-century paintings, they are faced with two modern sculptures of mutilated, naked bodies. The idea is to set up a dialogue between the old and the modern, and De Bruyckere chose to juxtapose two works by Bellini with two of her own works (see separate article).
One of the Bellini paintings, "Pieta: Dead Christ Supported by the Madonna and St John", is an early example of the artist depicting emotion in a way that reflects the influence of van der Weyden, whose works had reached Venice. Like the Bellinis, the Vivarinis were also among the first to incorporate the innovations from north of the Alps into the Venetian tradition.
Influences worked in the other direction, too, with Netherlandish painter Gerard David giving his severe and rigorous work a Venetian spirit through the use of colour, the openness of the landscapes and the corporeality of the characters, all aspects to be found in contemporary Venetian painting.
Titian transition
As the exhibition moves into the 16th century, the star of the show has to be Titian. A painter of religious subjects, portraits, allegories and scenes from Classical mythology and history, Titian is considered the greatest painter of the Venetian school, the undisputed master of his generation.
Included in the works by Titian is "Orpheus and Eurydice" (circa 1511), with the main characters lost in a dramatic landscape with the colours highlighted through the use of chiaroscuro. The fire in the background is reminiscent of Hieronymus Bosch's paintings, while the gentle light of the sunset recalls Titian's Netherlandish contemporary Joachim Patinir, considered the first landscape painter in the Low Countries.
A century later, and the big name is Rubens, who visited Venice in May of 1600 to study Titian, Veronese and Tintoretto. Rubens' style owes much to what he saw in Venice: painting technique, use of colour and the sheer expanse of the works hanging in Venetian churches and palaces. These Italian artists also influenced the work of Rubens' contemporary Jacob Jordaens, although the latter never made his long-desired trip to Italy. Among the works here is Jordaens' "Bacchus" (1640-1650), one of his many nudes alla veneziana.
Bozar acknowledges that the 17th century "saw a widening gap between Venetian culture and the culture of the Low Countries," with the still life proving a popular new genre in Flanders.
The 18th century section, meanwhile, is dominated by Venetian painting, with artists such as Canaletto and Francesco Guardi capturing urban life, both on the canals and on land. Titled "The twilight of Venice", this final chapter of the exhibition is devoted to the Venetian Republic's last decades before its fall to Napoleon in 1797.
A fotting painting is Pietro Longhi's "Ridotto", its characters wearing empty carnival masks, which, as the Bozar puts it "can be interpreted as an allegory of a society in irresistible decline and powerless to imagine a new future for itself."
Pictured: The Low Countries' first landscape painter: Joachim Patinir's "The Flight into Egypt"
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