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*Art ...*
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ArtSleuth
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A man
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Among rocks
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With a town in the background
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A picture by Giovanni Bellini
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A hero seeking inspiration in a glorious landscape?
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Better than that:
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the supreme champion of life lived simply and in harmony with nature:
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Saint Francis of Assisi ...
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… in a landscape touched by the fantastic!
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• two suns light the scene:
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• one in the direction the saint is looking
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• the other in the background
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• and the palms of his hands are bleeding
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The last recalls a miracle
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which Bellini’s predecessors happily gave the full Hollywood treatment:
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Celestial beings,
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bright light from on high,
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gaping wounds.
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So why does Bellini tone everything down?
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250 years have passed since the death of Saint Francis
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This sumptuous picture has been acquired by a group of Venetian magnates…
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… one of them a fabulously rich merchant banker:
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do they really believe in the poverty preached by the saint?
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And does Bellini - Renaissance painter and scholar in one, have doubts concerning miracles
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… which subvert the natural order?
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Or does he really want to paint a dazzling landscape, with Saint Francis as mere pretext?
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*BELLINI – Saint Francis in the desert*
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*Not miracle, but landscape?*
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Part 1. *Natural miracle*
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Is Bellini trying to make the miracle seem natural?
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The saint’s holy retreat in the mountains occupies the foreground …
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…close to a cave where he has made his home.
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Further back, a rural landscape,
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separated from the foreground by jagged rocks
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and this screen of vegetation
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and, behind a quietly flowing river, urban civilisation:
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a town ...
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…and buildings perched on hilltops,
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beneath a peaceful sky
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Standing firmly erect in his rough, homespun habit,
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the saint is in the world, and yet outside it too,
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with his gaze fixed on a strange source of light.
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Is it the autumn sun?
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Since the saint is either open-mouthed in wonder, or possibly singing,
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since this bewildered rabbit has started from its burrow
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since the saint has dropped his stick and sandals,
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since this foliage is lit from the front ...
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although the walls in the distance are in shadow …
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…we tend to feel that something less mundane is happening.
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Is the angel, the seraph, appearing to Saint Francis?
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Legend has it that night turned to day,
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to the near-by shepherds’ amazement.
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Of course, that might explain why the town is so quiet
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- not a soul in sight!
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But there’s no physical trace of the angel:
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the light in the foreground might come from a comet,
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and that in the background from the sun.
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But the painter goes even further.
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The heart of the miracle was the stigmata,
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the five wounds of the crucified Christ,
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which Saint Francis received kneeling down.
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Here, however, he is standing
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- and the wounds have been touched in so lightly that,
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on the left foot, they have vanished.
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And the wounds are simply marked with blood,
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although the saint’s first biographers tell us that his own flesh took on the shape of the nails…
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… and the wound in the side,
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which distinguished Christ from the thieves crucified with him…
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… does not appear in the picture.
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Light and perspective make the saint’s stigmatisation *a metaphor: *
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he is, as it were,
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virtually nailed to this crucifix,
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relegated to the edge of the picture.**
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In other words, he is no longer singled out by a spectacular manifestation of divine power:
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we are reminded of the miracle, but are not necessarily seeing it happen.
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The picture’s originality is more a matter of the saint’s posture and relationship with nature.
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Is the landscape indeed its real subject?
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Part 2. Nature v. town?
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There is no river or town near the real Monte Alverna,
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the saint’s chief retreat.
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And so this is not an actual landscape,
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but a figment of Bellini’s imagination!
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The town stands for the saint’s former life:
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The life of an arrogant “rich kid” from a family of cloth merchants.
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The life of the new bourgeoisie who,
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with their talent for trade and finance,
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are making Italy’s cities wealthy
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- and starting to worry about their own salvation.
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A life which Saint Francis puts behind him:
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he renounces his possessions;
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the bridge in the picture is symbolically cut
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every knot on his coarse habit represents a vow
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- of poverty,
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chastity,
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obedience - …
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… which he clearly honours :
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• The only trace of a meal, this simple pitcher,
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• The only sign of a church, this handbell,
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• His only means of study, this book and parchment.
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• A heron as symbol of fidelity to the Church
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- or of the old sybaritic lifestyle.
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• And the donkey to carry him - and symbolise bodily service,
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But the town itself is not demonised:
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•the donkey reminds us that Jesus returned to Jerusalem,
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•the shepherd that the gospel must be preached to the “lost sheep”…,
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Saint Francis seems to be saying that city-dwellers have forgotten the meaning of gratitude.
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The light we see is a gift from heaven
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As he sings a hymn to his creator, Saint Francis seems to be imitating a bird,
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and his body echoes the curve of the laurel bush
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But this isn’t the garden of Eden either
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- labour is man’s return for nature’s bounty, as he turns:
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• a cave into a home,
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• a vine into a pergola,
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• a fold in the ground into a garden,
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• and a spring into a conduit
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If we cannot imitate Christ’s *sacrifice *on the cross,
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Bellini suggests a life of giving and of prayer *as a modest alternative.*
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Building a chapel,
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donating a religious painting
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- these are some of the good works the rich can perform
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in the hope of gaining paradise.
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At the time Bellini paints his picture, the Franciscans are setting up special loan agencies - the Monte di Pietà
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- to help the poorest of the poor in Italy.
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The poverty of Saint Francis has become a *giving-based economic system, *
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and is steadily making the Franciscans more powerful.
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They control hundreds of buildings in town centres,
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and have already given the Church two popes.
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So - is Bellini simply their mouthpiece ?
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Part 3. The religion of nature
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The hallowed landscape is not Bellini’s invention.
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Traditionally, it is a stylised background
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which indicates that the saint portrayed
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is in a *different world from the viewer.*
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But interest in landscape as such becomes more marked in Italian and French art
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from the start of the XVth century.
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This pictorial version of the story of Saint Anthony is an example:
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While most of the episodes take place beneath a gilded sky or in a church,
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those where the saint is tempted in the desert
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are set in a real landscape.
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As in the desert scene with Saint Francis:
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There is a broken sky
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- blue, yellow and white
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and the high viewpoint allows us
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to explore the setting in depth.
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Contemporary Flemish painters
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take this mixture of the sacred and profane even further:
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Van Eyck puts the Virgin face-to-face with Chancellor Rolin,
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who has commissioned the picture.
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The landscape in the background
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is an idealised image of his territories, which he can then compare
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... to an ideal city…
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…with the Virgin as its queen.
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In spite of the crenellated wall which separates her from the secular world,
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she is almost *being used* to convey a political message!
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There is, therefore, a risk that landscape may destroy the *necessary distance *
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between the profane and the sacred.
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In his Saint Francis,
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Bellini deploys three separate solutions to the problem.
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First solution:
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he marks off areas where the supernatural holds sway.
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Bellini sometimes uses paved spaces with sturdy balustrades,
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... where certain events take place unseen by people in the background,
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... [to be translated]
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Compare this *transfiguration scene, *
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where a ravine protected by a frail wooden barrier
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separates us from the mountain where the miracle is taking place.
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Here, variations in the terrain serve this separating function.
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Variety and precision of detail also make us forget
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that the whole scene is imagined:
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we feel that we are really seeing the beauties of nature,
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a nature so delightful that it seems good
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- and so *good *that we feel it was created *for us *
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by a benevolent divinity.
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Second solution: signal the sanctity of the central figure.
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Instead of using the conventional halo …
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Bellini invests the saint’s posture with mystery.
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That mystery lies in the contrast between an unusually powerful and clearly defined *physical presence*
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....which stands out against the pale stone behind it...
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… and the outward signs of *spiritual ecstasy:*
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he is directly *in front of us, *and yet his attention is *elsewhere. *
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Third solution: light.
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Bellini applies very thin layers of paint on top of one another,
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which creates transparent effects…
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but also makes certain surfaces, like the stone, seem luminous:
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the underlying bright colours
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light them from within.
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Bellini’s Saint Francis thus seems
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a subtle forerunner of what we now call “fantasy” in literature and film:
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in an ordinary natural setting, something in a person’s behaviour,
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a brightness in the air
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and unexpected details
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all suggest the presence of the supernatural.
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Next episode: *the Young Knight* by Vittore Carpaccio
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Youth'promises
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*Find more information on: www.canal-educatif.fr*
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Written & directed by:
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Produced by:
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Scientific advisor:
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This film was made possible thanks to the support of sponsors (including you?) and of the French Ministry of Culture
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Voiceover:
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Editing and motion effects:
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Postproduction and sound recording:
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Musical selection:
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Musics
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Photographic credits
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Special thanks - English translation: Vincent Nash
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A CED production