The Presentation of Christ in the Temple (Giovanni Bellini)
The offering of Christ in the temple is a representation of the Holy Family by the Italian painter Giovanni Bellini . It is an oil painting on wood with a size of 80 cm × 105 cm, the creation of which is dated between 1450 and 1475. The presentation of the Lord is described in Luke's Gospel , according to which Jesus, like every firstborn son, was presented in the temple 40 days after his birth and triggered with a sacrifice.
Dating
The date of the work is uncertain, but it is generally assumed that Bellini took over the motif from his brother-in-law Andrea Mantegna , who painted it around 1454/1455 with the same title The Presentation of Christ in the Temple . The compositions of both artists are congruent, as Bellini adopted a very similar placement of the figures. The main characters are the same as in Mantegna's work; Bellini's picture contains two additional characters. For both works it is unknown whether they were commissioned and whether the figures, as is sometimes assumed, represent members of the families of their authors.
Bellini and Mantegna's paintings of the Presentation in the Temple also assume that the baby Jesus was circumcised .
The painting has been preserved by the Fondazione Querini Stampalia in Venice .
Description and style
Bellini's painting is slightly larger than Mantegna's, but the scale of the half-figures is identical. The Virgin Mary holds the baby Jesus , whose feet are on a pillow, while the long-bearded prophet Simeon is about to receive the child. In the center is Saint Joseph, who according to some scholars could be a portrait of Bellini's father Jacopo . The painter added two more figures to the sides. The two men on the right are identified as the author's self-portrait (looking at the viewer), as well as the portrait of his brother Gentile , while the women on the left are his wife Ginevra Bocheta (or sister Nicolosia) with her mother Anna could.
The picture of his brother-in-law Mantegna is enclosed in a frame, which Bellini replaced with a deep parapet , which makes his depiction less concentrated and more narrative. Mantegna directs the picture light onto the main characters Christ, Maria and Simeon, while Bellini's figures are evenly illuminated.
Mary's headdress is white and her dress is less precious than in his painting The Circumcision of Christ . The small hole in Mary's long earlobe, which is intended for wearing an earring, is not only interpreted as a sign of Jewish identity, since only Jewish women before the 15th century wore earrings, but the earring worn by Mary also has different ones in Christian art Meanings. In addition to their Jewish identity, it shows their oriental origins and interprets their person as a church ( Mater Ecclesia ), as stated by Bernhard von Clairvaux . The red headdress of the two women is attributed to the Sephardic (i.e. Spanish) Jews in Venice, where Bellini's Christian family came from. Hence, the interpretation of the red color is not clear because Christian women wore red. The representation in the temple thus shows a close relationship between the believers and the people shown in the scene.
Others
Bellini made another offering of Christ in the temple in the Kunsthistorisches Museum Vienna .
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ National Museums in Berlin : Invention or Imitation. In: Mantegna + Bellini. Retrieved on July 11, 2020 (German).
- ^ A b Brigit Blass-Simmen, Stefan Weppelmann : Padua and Venice: Transcultural Exchange in the Early Modern Age . Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG, 2017, ISBN 978-3-11-046540-2 ( google.de [accessed on July 11, 2020]).
- ^ Yaron Harel, Mauro Perani: The Jews in Italy: Their Contribution to the Development and Diffusion of Jewish Heritage . Academic Studies PRess, 2019, ISBN 978-1-64469-258-5 ( google.de [accessed on July 13, 2020]).
- ^ A b Renate Prochno: Competition and their faces in art: competition, creativity and their effects . Oldenbourg Verlag, 2010, ISBN 978-3-05-004991-5 , pp. 83–85 ( google.de [accessed on July 11, 2020]).
- ^ A b Yaron Harel, Mauro Perani: The Jews in Italy: Their Contribution to the Development and Diffusion of Jewish Heritage . Academic Studies PRess, 2019, ISBN 978-1-64469-258-5 ( google.de [accessed on July 13, 2020]).