Giovanni Bellini
Self-portrait
Born	1430 Venice
Died	1516 (aged 85–86)
Nationality	Italian
Field	Painting
Movement	Renaissance

Giovanni Bellini (c. 1430–1516^[1]) was an Italian Renaissance painter, probably the best known of the Bellini family of Venetian painters. His father was Jacopo Bellini, his brother was Gentile Bellini, and his brother-in-law was Andrea Mantegna. He is considered to have revolutionized Venetian painting, moving it towards a more sensuous and colouristic style. Through the use of clear, slow-drying oil paints, Giovanni created deep, rich tints and detailed shadings. His sumptuous coloring and fluent, atmospheric landscapes had a great effect on the Venetian painting school, especially on his pupils Giorgione and Titian.

Early career[link]

St. Jerome in the Desert, c. 1455; Tempera on panel; Barber Institute, Birmingham^[2]

Giovanni Bellini was born in Venice. He was brought up in his father's house, and always lived and worked in the closest fraternal relation with his brother Gentile. Up until the age of nearly thirty we find in his work a depth of religious feeling and human pathos which is his own. His paintings from the early period are all executed in the old tempera method; the scene is softened by a new and beautiful effect of romantic sunrise color (see for example, the St. Jerome at left).

Pietà, 1460; Tempera on panel; Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan

In a somewhat changed and more personal manner, with less harshness of contour and a broader treatment of forms and draperies, but not less force of religious feeling, are the Dead Christ pictures, in these days one of the master's most frequent themes, (see for example the Pietà: Dead Christ Supported by the Virgin and St. John at right). Giovanni's early works have often been linked both compositionally and stylistically to those of his brother-in-law, Andrea Mantegna (1431–1506).

In 1470 Giovanni received his first appointment to work along with his brother and other artists in the Scuola di San Marco, where among other subjects he was commissioned to paint a Deluge with Noah's Ark. None of the master's works of this kind, whether painted for the various schools or confraternities or for the ducal palace, have survived.

Maturity[link]

Transfiguration of Christ, c. 1487; oil on panel; Museo di Capodimonte, Naples

To the decade following 1470 must probably be assigned the Transfiguration (at right) now in the Naples museum, repeating with greatly ripened powers and in a much serener spirit the subject of his early effort at Venice.

Also the great altar-piece of the Coronation of the Virgin at Pesaro, which would seem to be his earliest effort in a form of art previously almost monopolized in Venice by the rival school of the Vivarini.

As is the case with a number of his brother, Gentile's public works of the period, many of Giovanni's great public works are now lost. The still more famous altar-piece painted in tempera for a chapel in the church of S. Giovanni e Paolo, where it perished along with Titian's Peter Martyr and Tintoretto's Crucifixion in the disastrous fire of 1867.

Madonna and Child, c. 1480; oil; Burrell Collection, Glasgow

After 1479–1480 much of Giovanni's time and energy must also have been taken up by his duties as conservator of the paintings in the great hall of the Doge's Palace. The importance of this commission can be measured by the payment Giovanni received: he was awarded, first the reversion of a broker's place in the Fondaco dei Tedeschi, and afterwards, as a substitute, a fixed annual pension of eighty ducats. Besides repairing and renewing the works of his predecessors he was commissioned to paint a number of new subjects, six or seven in all, in further illustration of the part played by Venice in the wars of Frederick Barbarossa and the pope. These works, executed with much interruption and delay, were the object of universal admiration while they lasted, but not a trace of them survived the fire of 1577; neither have any other examples of his historical and processional compositions come down, enabling us to compare his manner in such subjects with that of his brother Gentile.

Of the other, the religious class of his work, including both altar-pieces with many figures and simple Madonnas, a considerable number have fortunately been preserved. They show him gradually throwing off the last restraints of the Quattrocento manner; gradually acquiring a complete mastery of the new oil medium introduced in Venice by Antonello da Messina about 1473, and mastering with its help all, or nearly all, the secrets of the perfect fusion of colors and atmospheric gradation of tones. The old intensity of pathetic and devout feeling gradually fades away and gives place to a noble, if more worldly, serenity and charm. The enthroned Virgin and Child (such as the one at left) become tranquil and commanding in their sweetness; the personages of the attendant saints gain in power, presence and individuality; enchanting groups of singing and viol-playing angels symbolize and complete the harmony of the scene. The full splendour of Venetian color invests alike the figures, their architectural framework, the landscape and the sky.

High Renaissance[link]

San Giobbe Altarpiece, c. 1487; oil on panel; Accademia, Venice.

An interval of some years, no doubt chiefly occupied with work in the Hall of the Great Council, seems to separate the San Giobbe Altarpiece, and that of the church of San Zaccaria at Venice. Formally, the works are very similar, so a comparison between serves to illustrate the shift in Bellini's work over the last decade of the 15th century. Both pictures are of the Holy Conversation (sacred conversation between the Madonna and Saints) type. Both show the Madonna seated on a throne (thought to allude to the throne of Solomon), between classicizing columns. Both place the holy figures beneath a golden mosaicked half dome that recalls the Byzantine architecture in the basilica of St. Mark.

San Zaccaria Altarpiece, 1505; oil on canvas, transferred from panel; San Zaccaria, Venice

In the later work Bellini depicts the Virgin surrounded by (from left): St. Peter holding his keys and the Book of Wisdom; the virginal St. Catherine and St. Lucy closest to the Virgin, each holding a martyr's palm and her implement of torture (Catherine a breaking wheel, and Lucy a dish with her eyes); St. Jerome, with a book symbolizing his work on the Vulgate.

Stylistically, the lighting in the San Zaccaria piece has become so soft and diffuse that it makes that in the San Giobbe appear almost raking in contrast. Giovanni's use of the oil medium had matured, and the holy figures seem to be swathed in a still, rarefied air. The San Zaccaria is considered perhaps the most beautiful and imposing of all Giovanni's altarpieces, and is dated 1505, the year following that of Giorgione's Madonna of Castelfranco.

Other late altarpiece with saints include that of the church of San Francesco della Vigna at Venice, 1507; that of La Corona at Vicenza, a Baptism of Christ in a landscape, 1510; and that of San Giovanni Crisostomo at Venice of 1513.

Of Giovanni's activity in the interval between the altar-pieces of San Giobbe and San Zaccaria, there are a few minor works left, though the great mass of his output perished with the fire of the Doge's Palace in 1577. The last ten or twelve years of the master's life saw him besieged with more commissions than he could well complete. Already in the years 1501–1504 the marchioness Isabella Gonzaga of Mantua had had great difficulty in obtaining delivery from him of a picture of the Madonna and Saints (now lost) for which part payment had been made in advance. In 1505 she endeavoured through Cardinal Bembo to obtain from him another picture, this time of a secular or mythological character. What the subject of this piece was, or whether it was actually delivered, we do not know.

The Feast of the Gods, c. 1514 completed by his disciple, Titian, 1529: an example of Chinese porcelain in European painting; oil on canvas; National Gallery of Art, Washington^[3]

Albrecht Dürer, visiting Venice for a second time in 1506, describes Giovanni Bellini as still the best painter in the city, and as full of all courtesy and generosity towards foreign brethren of the brush.

In 1507 Bellini's brother Gentile died, and Giovanni completed the picture of the Preaching of St. Mark which he had left unfinished; a task on the fulfillment of which the bequest by the elder brother to the younger of their father's sketch-book had been made conditional.

In 1513 Giovanni's position as sole master (since the death of his brother and of Alvise Vivarini) in charge of the paintings in the Hall of the Great Council was threatened by one of his former pupils. Young Titian desired a share of the same undertaking, to be paid for on the same terms. Titian's application was granted, then after a year rescinded, and then after another year or two granted again; and the aged master must no doubt have undergone some annoyance from his sometime pupil's proceedings. In 1514 Giovanni undertook to paint The Feast of the Gods for the duke Alfonso I of Ferrara, but died in 1516.

He was interred in the Basilica di San Giovanni e Paolo, a traditional burial place of the doges.

Assessment[link]

St. Francis in Ecstasy, 1480; oil and tempera on panel; Frick Collection, New York^[4]

Le Christ Bénissant, 1465-1470. The tunic hem is extensively decorated with pseudo-Kufic (see detail).

Both in the artistic and in the worldly sense, the career of Bellini was, on the whole, very prosperous. His long career began with Quattrocento styles but matured into the progressive post-Giorgione Renaissance styles. He lived to see his own school far outshine that of his rivals, the Vivarini of Murano; he embodied, with growing and maturing power, all the devotional gravity and much also of the worldly splendour of the Venice of his time; and he saw his influence propagated by a host of pupils, two of whom at least, Giorgione and Titian, equalled or even surpassed their master. Giorgione he outlived by five years; Titian, as we have seen, challenged him, claiming an equal place beside his teacher. Other pupils of the Bellini studio included Girolamo da Santacroce, Vittore Belliniano, Rocco Marconi, Andrea Previtali^[5] and possibly Bernardino Licinio.

In the historical perspective, Bellini was essential to the development of the Italian Renaissance for his incorporation of aesthetics from Northern Europe. Significantly influenced by Antonello da Messina, who had spent time in Flanders, Bellini made prevalent both the use of oil painting, different from the tempera painting being used at the time by most Italian Renaissance painters, and the use of disguised symbolism integral to the Northern Renaissance. As demonstrated in such works as St. Francis in Ecstasy (c. 1480, at left) and the San Giobbe Altarpiece (c. 1478), Bellini makes use of religious symbolism through natural elements, such as grapevines and rocks. Yet his most important contribution to art lies in his experimentation with the use of color and atmosphere in oil painting.

Works[link]

Naked Young Woman in Front of the Mirror, Bellini's first female nude, painted when he was about 85 years old, circa 1515

• Madonna with Child (1450–1555) - Tempera on wood, 47 x 31.5 cm, Civico Museo Malaspina, Pavia [2]
• Madonna with Child (c. 1455) - Tempera on panel, 72 x 46 cm, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York[3]
• Dead Christ Supported by the Madonna and St. John (1455) - Tempera on wood, 52 x 42 cm, Accademia Carrara, Bergamo[4]
• Crucifixion (c. 1455) - Tempera on wood, 54.5 x 30 cm, Museo Correr, Venice[5]
• Transfiguration (c. 1455–1460) - Tempera on panel, 134 x 68 cm, Museo Correr, Venice [6]
• Dead Christ Supported by the Madonna and St. John (1460) - Tempera on panel, 86 x 107 cm, Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan[7]
• Dead Christ Supported by Two Angels (Pietà, c. 1460) - Tempera on panel, 74 x 50 cm, Museo Correr, Venice[8]
• Dead Christ in the Sepulchre (c. 1460) - Tempera on panel, 48 x 38 cm, Museo Poldi Pezzoli, Milan[9]
• Blessing Christ (c. 1460) - Tempera on wood, 58 x 44 cm, Musée du Louvre, Paris[10]
• The Blood of Christ (c. 1460) - Tempera on panel, 134 x 68 cm, National Gallery, London
• Madonna and Child (1460–1464) - Tempera on panel, 78 x 54 cm, Civiche Raccolte d'Arte, Milan[11]
• Madonna with Child Blessing (1460–1464) - Tempera on wood, 79 x 63 cm, Gallerie dell'Accademia, Venice[12]
• Madonna with Child (Greek Madonna, 1460–1464) - Tempera on wood, 82 x 62 cm, Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan[13]
• Madonna and Child (1460–1464) - Oil on canvas transferred from wood, 52 x 42.5 cm, Museo Correr, Venice[14]
• Madonna and Child (1460–1464) - Tempera on panel, 47 x 34 cm, Accademia Carrara, Bergamo[15]
• Presentation at the Temple (1460–1464) - Tempera on wood, 80 x 105 cm, Galleria Querini Stampalia, Venice[16]
• Head of the Baptist (1464–1468) - Tempera on wood, diameter 28 cm, Musei Civici, Pesaro[17]
• Polyptych of S. Vincenzo Ferreri (1464–1468) - Tempera on panel, Basilica dei Santi Giovanni e Paolo, Venice
• Agony in the Garden (c. 1465) - Tempera on wood, 81 x 127 cm, National Gallery, London[18]
• Pietà (1472) - Tempera on canvas, 115 x 317 cm, Doge's Palace, Venice[19]
• Dead Christ Supported by Angels (Bellini)Dead Christ Supported by Angels (c. 1474) - Tempera on panel, 91 x 131 cm, Pinacoteca Comunale, Rimini[20]
• Madonna Enthroned Adoring the Sleeping Child (1475) - Tempera on wood, 120 x 65 cm, Gallerie dell'Accademia, Venice[21]
• Madonna with Child (c. 1475) - Tempera on panel, 77 x 57 cm, Museo di Castelvecchio, Verona[22]
• Madonna with Child (c. 1475) - Tempera on panel, 75 x 50 cm, Santa Maria dell'Orto, Venice[23]
• Madonna in Adoration of the Sleeping Child (c. 1475) - Tempera on panel, 77 x 56 cm, Contini Bonacossi Collection, Florence[24]
• Madonna with Blessing Child (1475–1480) Oil on panel, 78 x 56 cm, Gallerie dell'Accademia, Venice[25]
• Portrait of a Humanist (1475–1480) - Oil on panel, 35 x 28 cm, Civiche Raccolte d'Arte, Milan
• Resurrection of Christ (1475–1479) - Oil on panel, 148 x 128 cm, Staatliche Museen, Berlin
• St. Francis in Ecstasy (c. 1480) - Oil on panel, 124 x 142 cm, Frick Collection, New York, United States
• Transfiguration of Christ (c. 1480) - Oil on panel, 116 x 154 cm, Museo di Capodimonte, Naples
• St. Jerome Reading in the Countryside (1480–1485) - Oil on wood, 47 x 34 cm, National Gallery, London
• Madonna Willys (1480–1490) - Oil on panel, 75 x 59 cm, São Paulo Museum of Art, São Paulo, Brazil
• Madonna and Child (1480–1490) - Oil on panel, 83 x 66 cm, Accademia Carrara, Bergamo
• Madonna of Red Angels (1480–1490) - Oil on panel, 77 x 60 cm, Gallerie dell'Accademia, Venice
• Portrait of a Condottiero - Oil on wood, 51 x 37 cm, National Gallery of Art, Washington
• Portrait of a Young Man in Red (1485–1490) - Oil on panel, 32 x 26 cm, National Gallery of Art, Washington
• Madonna degli Alberetti (1487) - Oil on panel, 74 x 58 cm, Gallerie dell'Accademia, Venice
• Madonna and Child (1485–1490) - Oil on panel, 88.9 x 71.1 cm, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
• San Giobbe Altarpiece (c. 1487) - Oil on panel, 471 x 258 cm, Gallerie dell'Accademia, Venice
• Madonna with Child and Sts. Peter and Sebastian (c. 1487) - Oil on panel, 84 x 61 cm, Musée du Louvre, Paris
• Frari Triptych (1488) - Oil on panel, Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari, Venice
• Barbarigo Altarpiece (1488) - Oil on canvas, 200 x 320 cm, San Pietro Martire, Murano
• Sacred Conversation (1490) - Oil on panel, 77 x 104 cm, Museo del Prado, Madrid
• Allegories (c. 1490) - Gallerie dell'Accademia, Venice
• Sacred Conversation (c. 1490) - Oil on wood, 58 x 107 cm, Gallerie dell'Accademia, Venice

Holy Allegory, Uffizi, Florence

• Holy Allegory (c. 1490) - Oil on panel, 73 x 199 cm, Uffizi, Florence
• Portrait of a Gentleman (1490-1500) - oil on wood, 31×26 cm, Uffizi, Florence
• The Lamentation over the Body of Christ (c. 1500) - Tempera on wood, 76 x 121 cm, Uffizi, Florence
• Angel Announcing and Virgin Announciated (c. 1500) - Oil on canvas, 224 x 105 cm (each), Gallerie dell'Accademia, Venice
• Portrait of a Young Man (c. 1500) - Oil on panel, 32 x 26 cm, Musée du Louvre, Paris
• Portrait of a Young Man (c. 1500) - Oil on wood, 31 x 25 cm, National Gallery of Art, Washington
• Portrait of a Young Senator (1500) - Oil on wood, 31 x 26 cm, Uffizi, Florence
• Portrait of Doge Leonardo Loredan (1501) - Oil on panel, 61.5 x 45 cm, National Gallery, London
• Baptism of Christ (1500–1502) - Oil on canvas, 400 x 263 cm, Santa Corona, Vicenza
• Head of the Redeemer (1500–1502) - Oil on panel, 33 x 22 cm, Gallerie dell'Accademia, Venice
• Madonna and Child with St. John the Baptist and a Saint (1500–1504) - Oil on panel, 54 x 76 cm, Gallerie dell'Accademia, Venice
• Crucifixion (1501–1503) - Oil on panel, 81 x 49 cm, The Albert Gallery, Prato
• Sermon of St. Mark in Alexandria (1504–1507) - Oil on canvas, 347 x 770 cm, Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan
• Holy Conversation (1505–1510) - Oil on panel, 62 x 83 cm, Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, Madrid
• San Zaccaria Altarpiece (1505) - Oil on canvas transferred from wood, 402 x 273 cm, San Zaccaria, Venice
• Madonna of the Meadow (Madonna del Prato; 1505) - Oil on canvas transferred from wood, 67 x 86 cm, National Gallery, London
• Pietà (1505) - Oil on wood, 65 x 90 cm, Gallerie dell'Accademia, Venice
• St. Jerome in the Desert (1505) - oil on panel, 49 x 39 cm, National Gallery of Art, Washington
• The Assassination of Saint Peter Martyr (1507) - Egg tempera and oil on wood, 99.7 x 165.1 cm, National Gallery, London
• Madonna and Child with Four Saints and Donator (1507) - Oil on wood, 90 x 145 cm, San Francesco della Vigna, Venice
• Continence of Scipio (1507–1508) - Oil on canvas, 74.8 x 35.6 cm, National Gallery of Art, Washington

The Murder of St Peter the Martyr, on display in the Courtauld Gallery

• The Murder of St. Peter the Martyr (1509) - Oil on panel, 67.3 x 100.4 cm, Courtauld Institute Galleries, London
• Madonna and Child Blessing (1510) - Oil on wood, 85 x 118 cm, Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan[26]
• Madonna with Child (c. 1510) - Oil on wood, 50 x 41 cm, Galleria Borghese, Rome
• Saints Christopher, Jerome and Louis of Toulouse (1513) - Oil on panel, 300 x 185 cm, S. Giovanni Crisostomo, Venice
• Feast of the Gods (1514) - Oil on cavas, 170 x 188 cm, National Gallery of Art, Washington
• Young Bacchus (c. 1514) - Oil on wood, 48 x 37 cm, National Gallery of Art, Washington
• Naked Young Woman in Front of the Mirror (1515) - Oil on canvas, 62 x 79 cm, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna
• Portrait of Teodoro of Urbino (1515) - Oil on canvas, 63 x 49.5 cm, National Gallery, London
• Deposition (c. 1515) - Oil on canvas, 444 x 312 cm, Gallerie dell'Accademia, Venice

Drunkenness of Noah from Giovanni Bellini, about 1515, Museum of Besançon

• Drunkenness of Noah (c. 1515) - Oil on canvas, 103 x 157 cm, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Besançon

References[link]

Further reading[link]

• Oskar Batschmann, Giovanni Bellini (London, Reaktion Books, 2008).

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Giovanni Bellini

• Giovanni Bellini biography, style and critical reception
• Giovanni Bellini in "A World History of Art"
• The National Gallery
• Web Gallery of Art
• Biblical art by Bellini
• National Gallery of Art

Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina.

Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina (3 February 1525 or 2 February 1526 – 2 February 1594)^[1] was an Italian Renaissance composer of sacred music and the best-known 16th-century representative of the Roman School of musical composition.^[2] He had a lasting influence on the development of church music, and his work has often been seen as the culmination of Renaissance polyphony.^[2]

Biography[link]

Palestrina was born in the town of Palestrina, near Rome, then part of the Papal States. Documents suggest that he first visited Rome in 1537, when he is listed as a chorister at the Santa Maria Maggiore basilica. He studied with Robin Mallapert and Firmin Lebel. He spent most of his career in the city.

Palestrina came of age as a musician under the influence of the northern European style of polyphony, which owed its dominance in Italy primarily to two influential Franco-Flemish composers, Guillaume Dufay and Josquin des Prez, who had spent significant portions of their careers there. Italy itself had yet to produce anyone of comparable fame or skill in polyphony.^[2]

From 1544 to 1551, Palestrina was organist of the principal church (St. Agapito) of his native city, and in 1551 he became maestro di cappella at the Cappella Giulia, the papal choir at St Peter's. His first published compositions, a book of Masses, had made so favorable an impression with Pope Julius III (previously the Bishop of Palestrina) that he appointed Palestrina musical director of the Julian Chapel. This was the first book of Masses by a native composer: in the Italian states of his day, most composers of sacred music were from the Low Countries, France, Portugal,^[3] or Spain. In fact the book was modeled on one by Cristóbal de Morales: the woodcut in the front is almost an exact copy of the one from the book by the Spanish composer.

During the next decade, Palestrina held positions similar to his Julian Chapel appointment at other chapels and churches in Rome, notably St John Lateran, (1555–1560 – a post previously held by Lassus) and Sta Maria Maggiore (1561–1566). In 1571 he returned to the Julian Chapel and remained at St Peter's for the rest of his life. The decade of the 1570s was difficult for him personally: he lost his brother, two of his sons, and his wife in three separate outbreaks of the plague (1572, 1575, and 1580, respectively). He seems to have considered becoming a priest at this time, but instead he remarried, this time to a wealthy widow. This finally gave him financial independence (he was not well paid as choirmaster) and he was able to compose prolifically until his death.

He died in Rome of pleurisy in 1594. In keeping with the custom of that time, Palestrina was buried on the same day he died, in a plain coffin with a lead plate on which was inscribed Libera me Domine. A five-part psalm for three choirs was sung at the funeral.^[4]

Music and reputation[link]

Palestrina left hundreds of compositions, including 105 masses, 68 offertories, at least 140 madrigals and more than 300 motets. In addition, there are at least 72 hymns, 35 magnificats, 11 litanies, and four or five sets of lamentations.^[2] His attitude toward madrigals was somewhat enigmatic: whereas in the preface to his collection of Canticum canticorum (Song of Songs) motets (1584) he renounced the setting of profane texts, only two years later he was back in print with Book II of his secular madrigals (some of these being among the finest compositions in the medium).^[2] He published just two collections of madrigals with profane texts, one in 1555 and another in 1586.^[2] The other two collections were spiritual madrigals, a genre beloved by the proponents of the Counter-Reformation.^[2]

Palestrina's masses show how his compositional style developed over time.^[2] His Missa sine nomine seems to have been particularly attractive to Johann Sebastian Bach, who studied and performed it while writing the Mass in B minor.^[5] Most of Palestrina's masses appeared in thirteen volumes printed between 1554 and 1601, the last seven published after his death.^[2][6]

One of his most enduring works is the Missa Papae Marcelli (Pope Marcellus Mass), which according to legend was composed in order to persuade the Council of Trent that a draconian ban on the polyphonic treatment of text in sacred music (as opposed, that is, to a more directly intelligible homophonic treatment) was unnecessary.^[7] However, more recent scholarship shows that this mass was in fact composed before the cardinals convened to discuss the ban (possibly as much as ten years before).^[7] It is probable, however, that Palestrina was quite conscious of the need for intelligible text, in conformity with the doctrine of the Counter-Reformation,^[7] and he certainly wrote in this manner from the 1560s until the end of his life. Palestrina's seemingly dispassionate approach to expressive or emotive texts could have resulted from his having to produce many to order, or from a deliberate decision that any intensity of expression was unbecoming in church music.^[2]

One of the hallmarks of Palestrina's music is that dissonances are typically relegated to the "weak" beats in a measure.^[8] This produced a smoother and more consonant type of polyphony which we now consider to be definitive of late Renaissance music, given Palestrina's position as Europe's leading composer (along with Lassus) in the wake of Josquin (d. 1521). The "Palestrina style" now serves as a basis for college Renaissance counterpoint classes, thanks in large part to the efforts of the 18th century composer and theorist Johann Joseph Fux, who, in a book called Gradus ad Parnassum (Steps to Parnassus, 1725), set about codifying Palestrina's techniques as a pedagogical tool for students of composition. Fux applied the term "species counterpoint", which entails a series of steps whereby students work out progressively more elaborate combinations of voices while adhering to certain strict rules. Fux did make a number of stylistic errors, however, which have been corrected by later authors (notably Knud Jeppesen and Morris). If we attempt to apply his rules to Palestrina's own music, we will find ample instances in which they have been followed to the letter, as well as many where they are freely broken.

According to Fux, Palestrina had established and followed these basic guidelines:

• The flow of music is dynamic, not rigid or static.
• Melody should contain few leaps between notes. (Jeppesen: "The line is the starting point of Palestrina's style."^[8]
• If a leap occurs, it must be small and immediately countered by stepwise motion in the opposite direction.
• Dissonances are to be confined to passing notes and weak beats. If one falls on a strong beat, it is to be immediately resolved.

Much of the research on Palestrina was done in the 19th century by Giuseppe Baini, who published a monograph in 1828 which made Palestrina famous again and reinforced the already existing legend that he was the "Saviour of Church Music" during the reforms of the Council of Trent.^[6] The 19th century proclivity for hero-worship is predominant in this monograph, however, and this has remained with the composer to some degree to the present day. Hans Pfitzner's opera Palestrina shows this attitude at its peak.^[6][7]

It is only recently, with the discovery and publication of a great deal of hitherto unknown or forgotten music by various Renaissance composers, that we have had the means to properly assess Palestrina in historical context.^[2] Though Palestrina represents late Renaissance music well, others such as Orlande de Lassus (a Franco-Flemish composer who also spent some of his early career in Italy) and William Byrd were arguably more versatile.^[2] 20th and 21st century scholarship by and large retains the view that Palestrina was a strong and refined composer whose music represents a summit of technical perfection, while emphasizing that some of his contemporaries possessed equally individual voices even within the confines of "smooth polyphony." As a result, composers like Lassus and Byrd as well as Tomas Luis de Victoria have increasingly come to enjoy comparable reputations.

Palestrina was famous in his day, and if anything his reputation increased after his death. Conservative music of the Roman school continued to be written in his style (which in the 17th century came to be known as the prima pratica) by such students of his as Giovanni Maria Nanino, Ruggiero Giovanelli, Arcangelo Crivelli, Teofilo Gargari, Francesco Soriano and Gregorio Allegri. It is also thought that Salvatore Sacco may have been a student of Palestrina, as well as Giovanni Dragoni, who later went on to become choirmaster in the church of S. Giovanni in Laterano.^[4]

Palestrina's music continues to be regularly performed and recorded, and to provide models for the study of counterpoint. There are two comprehensive editions of Palestrina's works: a 33 volume edition published by Breitkopf and Härtel, in Leipzig Germany between 1862 and 1894 edited by Franz Xaver Haberl, and a 34 volume edition published in the mid twentieth century, by Fratelli Scalera, in Rome, Italy edited by R. Casimiri and others.

References[link]

Sources[link]

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Giovanni Palestrina

• Free scores by Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina in the Choral Public Domain Library (ChoralWiki)
• Free scores by Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina in the Werner Icking Music Archive (WIMA)
• Free scores by Giovanni Pierluigi de Palestrina at the International Music Score Library Project
• Palestrina Foundation
• recording of Palestrina's Sicut Cervus from Coro Nostro, a mixed chamber choir based in Leicester, UK. Accessed 2010-04-17
• audio of songs Accessed 2010-04-17
• Catholic Encyclopedia: Palestrina extended Biography Accessed 2010-04-17
• Palestrina, princeps musicae Film by Georg Brintrup (2009) IMDb [1]
• Texts on Wikisource:
  • "Palestrina, Giovanni Pietro Aloisio da". The American Cyclopædia. 1879. 
  • "Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina". University Musical Encyclopedia. New York: University Society. 1912. 
  •  "Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina". Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company. 1913. 

Sister Wendy Beckett (born 25 February 1930), commonly known as just Sister Wendy, is a South African-born British nun, art expert, consecrated virgin and contemplative hermit who became well known in the 1990s presenting a series of art history documentaries for the BBC.

Life and work[link]

Beckett was born in South Africa and raised in Edinburgh, Scotland, where her father studied medicine. In 1946, she entered the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur, a religious congregation of the Roman Catholic Church. She was sent to England where she completed her novitiate and then studied at St Anne's College, Oxford University, where she was awarded a first class (with distinction) degree in English literature.^[1] Outside her academic work, she lived in a convent which maintained the strict code of silence typical in convents prior to the reforms following the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965).

After attending the I.M Marsh Teacher Training College, in suburban south Liverpool and earning a teaching diploma in 1954, she returned to South Africa to teach at Notre Dame Convent, a school for girls in Constantia, Cape Town, where she taught English and Latin. Later she moved to Johannesburg where she was appointed the superior of the local convent, while she also lectured at the University of the Witwatersrand. In 1970, health problems forced her to abandon teaching and return to England.

At that point, she obtained papal permission to leave her congregation and to become a consecrated virgin. Her former congregation then arranged for her to live under the protection of the Carmelite nuns at their monastery at Quidenham, Norfolk, in the east of England. There she leads a contemplative lifestyle and lives in a caravan on the grounds. Besides receiving the Carmelite prioress and a nun who brings her provisions, she dedicates her life solely to monastic solitude and prayer but allows herself two hours of work per day. She spent many years translating Medieval Latin scripts before deciding, in 1980, to pursue art, her favourite subject.

Sister Wendy Contemplates Saint Paul in Art was published in 2008 to celebrate the Year of Saint Paul. In May 2009, Encounters with God: In Quest of the Ancient Icons of Mary was published, which follows Beckett's pilgrimage to see the earliest icons of Mary which had survived the Byzantine iconoclasm.

Beckett continued writing about her interest in icons in the second volume of her Sister Wendy Contemplates series, published in July 2011. This book, entitled The Iconic Jesus, takes the reader through scenes from the New Testament, accompanied by Sister Wendy's reflections. Her next book, also published in 2011, "The Christ Journey", consists of her commentaries on the artwork of Greg Tricker.

When she required treating as an outpatient at a local hospital, the television chef Delia Smith volunteered, through a mutual friend, to drive her there each week. When Sister Wendy was writing her book about contemporary women artists, Delia Smith drove her around the country to meet the artists; through this the two became good friends.^[2]

Documentaries and bibliography[link]

Beckett has narrated the following documentaries:

• Sister Wendy's Odyssey (1992)
• Sister Wendy's Pains of Glass (1996)
• Sister Wendy's Grand Tour (1997)
• Sister Wendy's Story of Painting (1997)
• Sister Wendy's American Collection (2001)
• Sister Wendy at the Norton Simon Museum (2001)

and also an audio commentary for tourists to the Sistine Chapel:

• Sister Wendy's Sistine Chapel Artineraries Tour (2006)

Additionally she features in the following:

• Sister Wendy in Conversation with Bill Moyers (1997)
• Three appearances on Charlie Rose (3 October 1997; 18 November 1997; 19 September 2000) are available on DVD.
• The Art of Dying (2009) (Dan Cruickshank interviewed Sister Wendy on the helpfulness of art in the face of death^[3])
• Churches: How to Read Them (2010) (Richard Taylor and Sister Wendy discussed the intense medieval devotion to the Virgin Mary and its effect on Reformation^[4])
• Treasures of Heaven (2011) (Andrew Graham-Dixon talked to Sister Wendy about relics and reliquaries^[5])

Bibliography:

• 2011
  • The Christ Journey - the art of Greg Tricker.
• 2011
  • Sister Wendy Contemplates the Iconic Jesus
• 2009
  • Encounters With God: In Quest of Ancient Icons of Mary
• 2008
  • Bernard of Clairvaux: Sermons for Advent And the Christmas Season

    with John Leinenweber (Editor), Irene Edmonds (Translator), Wendy Mary Beckett (Translator), Conrad Greenia (Translator)

• 2007
  • Sister Wendy on Prayer
  • Sister Wendy's Meditations on the Mysteries of Our Faith
• 2006
  • Speaking to the Heart: 100 Favorite Poems
  • Sky-blue Is the Sapphire Crimson the Rose: Stillpoint of Desire in John of Forde by John, abbot of Forde, translated by Wendy Beckett
  • Joy Lasts: On the Spiritual in Art
• 2001
  • Sister Wendy's Impressionist Masterpieces
  • Sister Wendy's American Masterpieces
• 2000
  • Sister Wendy's American Collection
  • In the Midst of Chaos, Peace (with Mary J. Dorcy and Dan Paulos)
  • Sister Wendy's Book of Muses (with Justin Pumfrey)
• 1999
  • Sister Wendy's 1,000 Masterpieces (with Patricia Wright)
  • My Favourite Things: 75 Works of Art from Around the World
• 1998
  • Sister Wendy's Nativity
  • Inner Life: A Fellow Traveler's Guide to Prayer (by David Torkington; foreword by Sister Wendy)
  • Sister Wendy's Odyssey: A Journey of Artistic Discovery
  • Sister Wendy's Book of Meditations
  • Sister Wendy's Book of Saints
  • The Mystery of Love: Saints in Art Through the Ages
• 1997
  • Sister Wendy's Story of Christmas: Adventures in Art
  • Sister Wendy in Conversation with Bill Moyers: The Complete Conversation (edited by Karen Johnson)
  • The Wisdom of the Apostles (compiled by Philip Law; introduction by Sister Wendy)
  • The Duke and the Peasant: Life in the Middle Ages (with Jean De Berry)
  • Max Beckmann and the Self
• 1996
  • Sister Wendy's Grand Tour: Discovering Europe's Great Art
  • Pains of Glass: The Story of the Passion from King's College Chapel, Cambridge (with George Pattison)
• 1995
  • Sister Wendy's Meditations: Meditations on Joy
  • Sister Wendy's Meditations: Meditations on Love
  • Sister Wendy's Meditations: Meditations on Peace
  • Sister Wendy's Meditations: Meditations on Silence
  • A Child's Book of Prayer in Art
• 1994
  • The Story of Painting
  • The Gaze of Love: Meditations on Art and Spiritual Transformation
• 1993
  • The Mystical Now: Art and the Sacred

Works about her by other people[link]

• Postcards From God: The Sister Wendy Musical was written by Marcus Reeves and Beccy Smith^[6] and performed at the Jermyn Street Theatre in the West End in 2007 and Hackney Empire Studio Theatre in 2008.

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Wendy Beckett

• Sister Wendy at PBS.
• Interview with Sister Wendy

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (November 2007)

Domenico Scarlatti
1738 portrait by Domingo Antonio Velasco

Giuseppe Domenico Scarlatti (26 October 1685 – 23 July 1757) was an Italian composer who spent much of his life in the service of the Portuguese and Spanish royal families. He is classified as a Baroque composer chronologically, although his music was influential in the development of the Classical style. Like his renowned father Alessandro Scarlatti he composed in a variety of musical forms, although today he is known mainly for his 555 keyboard sonatas.

Life and career[link]

Domenico Scarlatti was born in Naples, Kingdom of Naples, in 1685, the same year as Johann Sebastian Bach and George Frideric Handel. He was the sixth of ten children and a younger brother to Pietro Filippo Scarlatti, also a musician. He probably first studied under his father, the composer and teacher Alessandro Scarlatti; other composers who may have been his early teachers include Gaetano Greco, Francesco Gasparini, and Bernardo Pasquini, all of whom may have influenced his musical style.

He became a composer and organist at the royal chapel in Naples in 1701. In 1704, he revised Carlo Francesco Pollarolo's opera Irene for performance at Naples. Soon afterwards, his father sent him to Venice. After this, nothing is known of Scarlatti's life until 1709, when he went to Rome in the service of the exiled Polish queen Marie Casimire. He met Thomas Roseingrave there. Scarlatti was already an eminent harpsichordist: there is a story of a trial of skill with George Frideric Handel at the palace of Cardinal Ottoboni in Rome where he was judged possibly superior to Handel on that instrument, although inferior on the organ. Later in life, he was known to cross himself in veneration when speaking of Handel's skill. In Rome, Scarlatti composed several operas for Queen Casimira's private theatre. He was Maestro Di Cappella at St. Peter's from 1715 to 1719. In 1719 he travelled to London to direct his opera Narciso at the King's Theatre.

According to Vicente Bicchi (Papal Nuncio at the time), Domenico Scarlatti arrived in Lisbon on 29 November 1719. There he taught music to the Portuguese princess Maria Magdalena Barbara. He left Lisbon on 28 January 1727 for Rome, where he married Maria Caterina Gentili on 6 May 1728. In 1729 he moved to Sevilla, staying for four years and gaining a knowledge of flamenco. In 1733 he went to Madrid as music master to Princess Maria Barbara, who had married into the Spanish royal house. The Princess later became Queen of Spain. Scarlatti remained in the country for the remaining twenty-five years of his life, and had five children there. After the death of his first wife in 1742, he married a Spaniard, Anastasia Maxarti Ximenes. Among his compositions during his time in Madrid were a number of the 555 keyboard sonatas for which he is best known.

Scarlatti befriended the castrato singer Farinelli, a fellow Neapolitan also enjoying royal patronage in Madrid. The musicologist Ralph Kirkpatrick commented that Farinelli's correspondence provides "most of the direct information about Scarlatti that has transmitted itself to our day." Domenico Scarlatti died in Madrid, at the age of 71. His residence on Calle Leganitos is designated with a historical plaque, and his descendants still live in Madrid.

This section includes inline links to audio files. If you have trouble playing the files, see Wikipedia Media help.

Music[link]

	Sonata in D minor K. 9, Allegretto performed on a harpsichord by Martha Goldstein
	Sonata in E major K. 20, Presto performed on a harpsichord by Martha Goldstein
	Sonata in B minor K. 27, Allegro performed on a piano by Raymond Smullyan
	Sonata in F Minor K. 69 performed on a spinet by Ulrich Metzner
	Sonata in C major K. 159, Allegro performed on a piano by Veronica van der Knaap
	Sonata in B minor K. 377 MIDI rendition
	Sonata in E major K. 380, Andante comodo performed on a piano by Raymond Smullyan
	Sonata in E major K. 531, Allegro performed on a piano by Raymond Smullyan

Only a small fraction of Scarlatti's compositions were published during his lifetime; Scarlatti himself seems to have overseen the publication in 1738 of the most famous collection, his 30 Essercizi ("Exercises"). These were rapturously received throughout Europe, and were championed by the foremost English writer on music of the eighteenth century, Charles Burney.

The many sonatas which were unpublished during Scarlatti's lifetime have appeared in print irregularly in the two and a half centuries since. Scarlatti has attracted notable admirers, including Frédéric Chopin, Johannes Brahms, Béla Bartók, Dmitri Shostakovich, Heinrich Schenker, Vladimir Horowitz, Emil Gilels, Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli, and Marc-André Hamelin.

Scarlatti's 555 keyboard sonatas are single movements, mostly in binary form, and mostly written for the harpsichord or the earliest pianofortes. (There are four for organ, and a few for small instrumental group). Some of them display harmonic audacity in their use of discords, and also unconventional modulations to remote keys.

Other distinctive attributes of Scarlatti's style are the following:

• The influence of Iberian (Portuguese and Spanish) folk music. An example is Scarlatti's use of the Phrygian mode and other tonal inflections more or less alien to European art music. Many of Scarlatti's figurations and dissonances are suggestive of the guitar.
• A formal device in which each half of a sonata leads to a pivotal point, which the Scarlatti scholar Ralph Kirkpatrick termed "the crux", and which is sometimes underlined by a pause or fermata. Before the crux, Scarlatti sonatas often contain their main thematic variety, and after the crux the music makes more use of repetitive figurations as it modulates away from the home key (in the first half) or back to the home key (in the second half).

Ralph Kirkpatrick produced an edition of the sonatas in 1953, and the numbering from this edition is now nearly always used – the Kk. or K. number. Previously, the numbering commonly used was from the 1906 edition compiled by the Neapolitan pianist Alessandro Longo (L. numbers). Kirkpatrick's numbering is chronological, while Longo's ordering is a result of his grouping the sonatas into "suites". In 1967 the Italian musicologist Giorgio Pestelli published a revised catalogue (using P. numbers), which corrected what he considered to be some anachronisms.^[1]

Aside from his many sonatas, he composed a quantity of operas and cantatas, symphonias, and liturgical pieces. Well known works include the Stabat Mater of 1715 and the Salve Regina of 1757, which is thought to be his last composition.

References[link]

• Kirkpatrick, Ralph (1953). Domenico Scarlatti. Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-691-02708-0. 

Notes[link]

Free scores[link]

• Free scores by Domenico Scarlatti in the Werner Icking Music Archive (WIMA)
• Free scores by Domenico Scarlatti at the International Music Score Library Project
• Sheet music for K.1 to K.176 John Sankey edition
• www.kreusch-sheet-music.net harpsichord sonatas by Scarlatti
• Free scores by Domenico Scarlatti in the Choral Public Domain Library (ChoralWiki)
• Sheet music engraved by Sebastiano Vigna

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Domenico Scarlatti

• The Mutopia Project has compositions by Domenico Scarlatti
• Converter for Scarlatti's Works Number
• Associazione Domenico Scarlatti
• John Sankey: Keyboard Tuning of Domenico Scarlatti
• John Sankey: Complete edition, harpsichord, downloadable recordings in MIDI
• The Life of Domenico Scarlatti
• Scarlatti Domenico – A new look at the keyboard sonatas; complete catalogue including newly discovered works
• "The mercurial maestro of Madrid" by Robert White, 20 July 2007, The Guardian
• 538 Piano Sonatas (mp3 files)
• Piano Society – A short biography and some free recordings in MP3 format, performed by Roberto Carnevale, Chase Coleman, Graziella Concas, Knut Erik Jensen

The topic of this article may not meet Wikipedia's notability guideline for astronomical objects. Please help to establish notability by adding reliable, secondary sources about the topic. If notability cannot be established, the article is likely to be merged, redirected, or deleted. (February 2012)

17435 di Giovanni (1989 SP3) is a Mars-crossing asteroid discovered on September 26, 1989 by E. W. Elst at the European Southern Observatory.

References[link]

External links[link]

• JPL Small-Body Database Browser on 17435 di Giovanni

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