“The Myth Of Venice” In The Drawings Of Jacopo Bellini – Other Facets Of Imagery
Authors: Samsonova Elena V. 
Published: July 2024

The article focuses on the drawings of Jacopo Bellini (c.1400-1470/1471) from two famous Albums kept in the Louvre (c.1430-1450) and the British Museum (c.1455-1470), the themes of which are related to the mythologemes of the Venetian Republic. This publication
is a continuation of the article: “Jacopo Bellini: the Matter of Visualising the ‘Myth of Venice’” (previously published in the journal Burganov House. The Space of Culture).
In view of the rich thematic “repertoire” of the albums, the main goal of the study is to discover the connection between Bellini’s drawings on different plots or motifs with the historical and ideological basis of the “myth of Venice”.
In addition to religious subjects included in the complex architectural compositions of J. Bellini’s “ideal city”, the facets of “myth” are reflected in his female images, in portraits of Venetian warriors and knights, in battle scenes, and also in drawings of lions. This graphic material from the albums of the founder of the Venetian Renaissance will be the subject of our study.
Through the prism of the task at hand and also in connection with the obvious variety of overlapping themes in the two amazing volumes, the drawings in them do not exhaust themselves, just like the culture of Venice. The entire world around us seems to be included in the graphic “cabinet of curiosities”. And it is also why the albums are of great importance for fine art.
In the samples we are considering, the artist continued to “discover the world and man”, looking for pictorial boundaries of the objective world. He was interested not only in modelling the spatial environment but also in the anatomical nature of man, his interaction with nature and space, portraits and multi-figure compositions in urban settings and rural areas. Albums became not just visual evidence of the flow of life through the master’s observations and his artistic preferences, but also a kind of treatise on applied human anatomy, animal art, not to mention linear perspective. The “personal character” of the drawings created for oneself (fatti per se) is again felt. Graphics appears as an independent form in the fine arts of Venice. And finally, “myth” takes on a new
existence in Venetian art, providing its successors with an ideal narrative channel for the motifs and holistic images developed by Jacopo Bellini.
However, how are drawings of female images or warriors and knights connected with the matter of “myth”? Nevertheless, consistently studying the material from the point of view of historiography, the main postulates of the republic, which turned into its main mythologemes, as well as examining Bellini’s sheets using the method of formal-stylistic and comparative analysis, we discover a subtle and sometimes obvious reference to the “myth of Venice”, ambitions and the political climate of the city-state. Thus, already at the turn of the 16’th century, feminas drawn or painted on canvas acquired the status of the most important element in the art of Venice. Actually, Venice identified itself with a female image. Its personification became a powerful propaganda tool in the art of the Cinquecento. In this sense, the steps taken by Bellini (in the middle of the Quattrocento) to study female nature are especially valuable. It is no coincidence that the artist was interested in military themes and images of courageous Venetians, morally and physically prepared not only for knightly tournaments but also for real victories at sea and land. The brilliant development of the military motif in the form of sketches and integral compositions is a reflection of a socially significant phenomenon for Venice, which we consistently prove in the article.
And in conclusion, we examine sheets with figures of lions, grouping them according to iconography. A lion, as a symbol of St. Mark the Evangelist, directly associated with Venice, became almost the main emblem of the republic. In this regard, Jacopo Bellini’s appeal to this traditional motif, as close as possible to the Venetian selfconsciousness, also seems to be the Venetian master’s significant contribution both to the further formation of the “myth” of Venice and to the formation of the Venetian Renaissance in art.