NGA: Italian, French, & Spanish Renaissance

Last week I began the monumental journey of exploring the National Gallery of Art (NGA) in Washington D.C.  If anyone has ever visited (like I pretended to do two years ago), if you don't know what to expect, it is overwhelming.  In the West Building, in particular, there are so many different paintings and interconnected rooms and movements and styles that it is easy to get turned around, over-saturated, and sick of looking at art very quickly.  That was my experience two years ago.

This time, I decided I would take  my time, take two or three weeks if need be with only 1.5-3 hours max at the gallery any day I decided to go.  It has made a huge difference in my ability to want to keep visiting, to remembering the things I learned while visiting, and to not create a huge headache.  I originally planned on taking a person-led tour everyday but on my first day in the West Building (which is art up until the Impressionists/Post-Impressionists), the tour guide couldn't make it for the introductory tour I'd planned on going to, so instead I changed my plan and switched to doing the self-guided audio-tours.  I've loved doing them!  The people at the audio tour desk now recognize me. I will be devoting several blog posts to the different sections in the National Gallery of Art, including the East Building and the Sculpture Garden.

Italian, French, and Spanish Renaissance

Madonna and Child in a Landscape, Giovanni Bellini, 1480/1485

This is one of Bellini's earlier paintings.  It depicts a rather chubby baby Jesus, with a solemn Mary looking down. I love the landscape in the background, especially the clouds.  There isn't a lot of emotion, though he is able to portray his subjects well, and unlike earlier medieval paintings, baby Jesus looks like a baby, not a miniature adult.

Portrait of a Venetian Gentleman, Giovanni Bellini, 1500

In this painting about 15-20 years later, Bellini just did a portrait, another commission request (besides Madonnas) that was on the rise.   This man's face shape is very similar to the Madonna of twenty years before, but I feel that even though there isn't a lot of emotion, this man has more visible character than is evidenced in the Madonna painting.  This painting was quite small, with not a lot of variety in the palette used.

The Feast of the Gods, Giovanni Bellini and Titian, 1514/1529

And then WHAMMO!  Skip forward another 15 years for Bellini, and this is what he's being asked to paint. Not a Madonna (though those were continuing to be painted during the Renaissance) and not a portrait (though those two were still commissioned), but a flashback to antiquity with the Greek gods hanging out drinking wine.  Bellini uses a much larger variety of colors and seems to make more of a study on the human figures than he had in his other two paintings.   There is a lot more action in this painting among the figures, with a lot of little stories going on. Originally there wasn't a large forest to the upper right; Titian added that.

Detail from The Feast of the Gods

Madonna and Child with the Infant Saint John, attributed to Fernand Yanez de la Almedina, 1505

I wanted to focus on the differences between this version of Madonna and Child with St. John. They were only painted five years apart, by different artists.  The artists used similar colors for the clothing of the Holy Family, based on years of symbolism. I like how both artists were able to show the difference of 6 months age in the two boys. As I've observed my nephew growing this past year, the physical and cognitive between him six months ago and now are amazing, and I feel like both of these artists were able to show that difference between the cousins. I love the softness in Mary's face in both paintings.  All in all, I think I like the Mary from the Almedina painting and the two boys from Raphael's painting.  I also like that Raphael's painting is on a circular canvas, which adds to the intimacy of the scene, I think.  These two Madonnnas are so different from Bellini's; what a difference the Renaissance made.

The Alba Madonna, Raphael, 1510

While I also viewed pieces from the French and Spanish lines, I didn't take any pictures. If you're interested in any, go here for French Renaissance Art (I didn't see any of these at the NGA) and here for Spanish Renaissance Art (I saw El Greco's Laocoon and some of his other pieces).