Bartolomeo Veneto

Bartolomeo Veneto (Italian painter, active 1502, died 1531)

Italian painter. He worked in Venice, the Veneto and Lombardy in the early decades of the 16th century. Knowledge of him is based largely on the signatures, dates and inscriptions on his works. His early paintings are small devotional pictures; later he became a fashionable portraitist. His earliest dated painting, a Virgin and Child (1502; Venice, priv. col., see Berenson, i, pl. 537), is signed ‘Bartolomeo half-Venetian and half-Cremonese’. The inscription probably refers to his parentage, but it also suggests the eclectic nature of his development. This painting is clearly dependent on similar works by Giovanni Bellini and his workshop, but in a slightly later Virgin and Child (1505; Bergamo, Gal. Accad. Cararra) the sharp modelling of the Virgin’s headdress and the insistent linear accents in the landscape indicate Bartolomeo’s early divergence from Giovanni’s depiction of light and space. An inscription on his Virgin and Child of 1510 (Milan, Ercolani Col.) states that he was a pupil of Gentile Bellini, an assertion supported by the tightness and flatness of his early style. The influence of Giovanni is still apparent in the composition of the Circumcision (1506; Paris, Louvre), although the persistent stress on surface patterns and the linear treatment of drapery and outline is closer to Gentile.

Bartolomeo’s experience as a painter at the Este court in Ferrara (1505–8) probably encouraged the decorative emphasis of his style. In the half-length Portrait of a Man (c. 1510; Cambridge, Fitzwilliam) the flattened form of the fashionably dressed sitter is picked out against a deep red curtain so that the impression of material richness extends across the entire picture surface. The precise layout and meticulous attention to costume detail are also characteristic of Bartolomeo’s style in sacred subjects.

Bartolomeo was probably in Padua in 1512, and from 1520 he was in Milan, where he obtained a number of important portrait commissions. The mediocre Milanese portrait tradition had been revitalized by Leonardo da Vinci in the late 15th century and further developed by his follower Andrea Solario. Bartolomeo’s immediate response to this tradition, evident in the Girl Playing the Lute (1520; Milan, Brera; another autograph version Boston, MA, Isabella Stewart Gardner Mus.), is characterized by sharp chiaroscuro that gives a new structural coherence and freedom. These features are also present in the series of half-length portraits of fashionably dressed young men (1520; Washington, DC, N.G.A.; Houston, TX, Mus. F.A.; Rome, Pal. Barberini). Although Bartolomeo continued to demonstrate an interest in decorative detail in these portraits, the subtle play of light across the sitters’ faces gives a new psychological suggestiveness reminiscent of Leonardo. Two later portraits show a further stylistic progression. The Portrait of a Woman (1530; ex-Mentmore Towers, Bucks; sold London, Sotheby’s, 25 May 1977) and the portrait of Ludovico Martinengo (1530; London, N.G.) are both three-quarter length, with softer, more fluid handling and a greater sense of volume, depth and movement. These elements indicate Bartolomeo’s awareness of the portraiture of Titian, although the interest in elaborate costume and the prominent use of a dusky red colour are continuations from his own earlier style.

The documents confirming Bartolomeo’s death at Turin in 1531 suggest he had been living there for some time, although it is likely that he was still active in the Milan area in June 1530 when he painted Martinengo, an aristocrat from nearby Brescia. Portrait drawings by Bartolomeo survive at Modena (Gal. & Mus. Estense), Milan (Bib. Ambrosiana) and Vienna (Albertina).

Bibliography

DBI

A. Venturi: ‘Bartolomeo Veneto’, L’Arte, ii (1899), pp. 432–62

E. Michalski: ‘Zur Problematik des Bartolomeo Veneto’, Z. Bild. Kst, lxi (1927–8), pp. 280–88, 301–9

A. Mayer: ‘Zur Bildniskunst des Bartolomeo Veneto’, Pantheon, ii (1928), pp. 571–81

E. Michalski: ‘Zur Stilkritik des Bartolomeo Veneto’, Z. Bild. Kst, lxv (1931–2), pp. 177–84

B. Berenson: Venetian School (1957), i, pp. 11–13

C. Gilbert: ‘Bartolomeo Veneto and his Portrait of a Lady’, Bull. N.G. Can., 22 (1973), pp. 2–16

C. Boselli: ‘Il pittore Bartolomeo Veneto alla luce di nuovi documenti’, A. Ven., xxviii (1974), pp. 295–6

M. S. Newton: ‘The Dating of a Portrait by Bartolomeo Veneto’, A. Ven., xxx (1976), pp. 157–8

L. Pagnotta: Bartolomeo Veneto: l’opera completa (Florence, 1997)

Thomas Nichols

Grove Art online, accessed 2/7/14, E. Reluga