MONTAGNA, Bartolomeo

The infant Jesus sits on a corner of the Virgin Mary’s cloak, looking out at us solemnly and resting one hand on a book. His mother joins her hands in devotion, the thoughtful expression on her face suggesting knowledge of her son’s fate. The sacred status of the figures is indicated by the cloth of honour separating them from the background. Behind them is a rocky landscape, inspired perhaps by the mountains of northern Italy where the artist lived and worked.

Signed and dated on the step: “OPVS/BARTHOLOMEI/MONTA/GNA MCCCCLX- XXXVIIII.” The represented figures are Sts Andrew, Monica, Ursula, Sigismund and angel musicians. The large capitals in the background frieze are the initials of the Latin phrase meaning: “Implore God’s grace for us.” The medallion on the left portrays Matteo de’ Pasti’s profile plaque of Christ. Another Latin inscription on the step records a 1715 restoration, which does not seem to have much altered the painting. Preliminary drawings for this work are in the Uffizi and at Windsor Castle. Documented as having been in San Michele, Vicenza, it has been in the Brera since 1811.

Trained in Venice, Bartolomeo interpreted the great Venetian models in an archaising vein, as did all the contemporary artists of the mainland. His prodigiously skillful draftsmanship defined lapidary forms that may be splintered or flaked but are always pure and as resonant as crystal. His strict sense of order is open, however, to an aristocratic feeling for nature, which is shown in pungently descriptive passages. In this altarpiece, the noble figures are displayed within a purely Lombard architectural setting. The composition is also architectonic, and its precedents go back through Antonello da Messina to Piero della Francesca, whose device of a pendant ostrich egg has been adopted here. The brown and silvery harmonies of the Lombard palette add a note of elegant austerity.

The detail shows the angel musicians.

The painting was originally on the third altar on the left in San Michele in Vicenza, demolished in 1812. It is characterized by an impressive harmony between the bony plasticity of the figures’ bodies and the grim, reddish brown shades of their skin. The throne seems to have been carved out of the rock; the canopy, held up by thin saplings, awakens in the viewer the solemn calm of the sacred.

In 1964 an aggressive cleaning was carried out which resulted in unwanted effects.

The painter was influenced by Alvise Vivarini.

The Scuola del Santo in Padua, the house where the brotherhood of St Anthony met, was on the edge of the square in front of the church in which the famous Franciscan saint was buried. This lay confraternity united mainly traders, merchants and artisans who assembled for regular services and mutual social welfare. The Sala Capitolare served for the meetings of the male members, and the older room on the ground floor was allocated to the women. A lavish decoration of the upper hall was begun in 1508 with painted ornaments on the coffered ceiling. At the same time they added wood paneling, armoires, and benches that covered the lower part of the walls. The remaining surface of the walls above this was divided into fields by wooden pilasters, and beginning in 1509it was frescoed by various painters - in the tradition of the older ‘scuola’ decorations in Venice and Padua. Within a few years a cycle of at least twelve episodes from the life and work of St Anthony had been completed.

The painters of the fresco decoration were Giovanni Antonio Requesta (known as Corona), Filippo da Verona, Tiziano Vecellio, Francesco Vecellio, Girolamo Tessari (known as Girolamo del Santo), Bartolomeo Montagna, and Domenico Campagnola. The room owes its fame in the history of Italian art to three of the paintings: the frescoes Titian produced for the brotherhood in 1511.

Scenes with St Anthony are found on all four walls of the room. The history cycle paintings immediately to the left and right of the altar on the altar wall show Anthony using his eloquence for the well-being of Padua. In the left fresco he is seen soon after his arrival in Padua, preaching to establish peace among the citizens of the city; in the right painting he is calming and converting the tyrant Ezzelino, who represented a threat to Padua from outside. These frescoes were executed by Corona.

To the left of the altar wall, on the long entrance wall, follows a series of miraculous cures by Anthony. The scenes are: The Miracle of the Jealous Husband (Titian); The Healing of the Wrathful Son (Titian); St Anthony Heals a Child who Has Fallen into Boiling Water (Girolamo del Santo, divided into two by the window); Resurrection of a Murdered Man (Bartolomeo Montagna); The Death of St Anthony (18th-century addition); Resurrection of a Drowned Girl (Domenico Campagnola); Resurrection of a Drowned Child (Domenico Campagnola).

The end wall (opposite to the altar wall) shows the saint’s three most famous miracles: The Miracle of the Newborn Child (Titian); The Miracle of the Miser’s Heart (Francesco Vecellio); The Miracle of the Host (Francesco Vecellio).

The right wall to the altar (the second long wall) depicts, between three windows, four events that took place only after the saint’s death: St Anthony Appears to the Blessed Luca Belludi (Filippo da Verona); The Death of St Anthony (Girolamo del Santo); Recovery of the Relic of St Anthony’s Jawbone (Bartolomeo Montagna); Miracle of the Glass (Girolamo del Santo).

The picture shows Bartolomeo Montagna’s painting on the second long wall. In 1350 Cardinal Guido di Monfort removed the saint’s jawbone from his grave, and is kept in a reliquary bust to this day.

The most striking aspect of this picture is the fabulous landscape on the right, which seems to be only partially invented. The Veronese provenance of the work suggests the interesting theory that it was painted for the convent of St Jerome at the Roman theater. The topographical features of Verona recur here, though in altered form: the river, the ruins, the double staircase cut into the tufa, the church and the convent. Bartolomeo’s main inspiration seems to have stemmed from a reality that he returned to a state of nature, converting the townscape he knew into a rustic landscape.

This painting is executed with an astonishing synthesis of the human figure, architecture, and landscape. The artist’s debt to Antonello da Messina is enriched by elements drawn from Giovanni Bellini, most evident in the delightful fragment of Veneto landscape, where among various borrowed buildings one finds the fa�ade of the Duomo in Vicenza and the Arena in Pola.

The inscription on the scroll carried by the little dog in his mouth reads: ESTO FIDELIS (“Be faithful”).

This is the primary signed and dated version of three panels representing the young Christ which Montagna executed in or around 1507 when the artist was in Verona.

The iconography of representations of the young Christ was well established in the Veneto in the 16th century. The inspiration for many of these representations probably depended on a lost prototype by Leonardo or on Albrecht D�rer’s Christ Among the Doctors, which was in Venice in the early 16th century.

The panel is signed, inscribed and dated on the ledge: CHRISTVS VIVIFICAT SVAM FIGVRAM . MDVII ./ MONTAGNAE CELEBRIS MANVS VENVSTAT. DIE. III MARCII.