Jacopo de' Barbari
Encyclopedia
Jacopo de' Barbari, sometimes known or referred to as de'Barbari, de Barberi, de Barbari, Barbaro, Barberino, Barbarigo or Barberigo (c. 1440 – before 1516), was an Italian
painter
and printmaker with a highly individual style. He moved from Venice to Germany in 1500, thus becoming the first Italian Renaissance artist of stature to work in Northern Europe. His few surviving paintings (about twelve) include the first known example of trompe l'oeil
since antiquity. His twenty-nine engraving
s and three very large woodcut
s were also highly influential.
by contemporaries, including Albrecht Dürer
("van Venedig geporn"), and as 'old and weak' in 1511, so dates of between 1450 and 1470 have been proposed. Since the earlier part of the range would have him achieve sudden prominence at the age of nearly fifty, the later part would seem more likely. There have also been suggestions he was of German extraction; but it now seems clear he was Italian; there are surviving documents of his in Italian addressed to Germans. He signed most of his engravings with a caduceus
, the sign of Mercury
, and the Munich still-life (right) with this below his name: "Jac.o de barbarj p 1504" on the painted piece of paper. He was probably not of the important Venetian Barbaro family as he was never listed in that family's genealogy.
Nothing is known about his first decades, although Alvise Vivarini
has been suggested as his master. He left Venice for Germany
in 1500, and thereafter is better documented. There he worked for the Emperor Maximilian I
in Nuremberg for a year, then in various places for Frederick the Wise of Saxony
in 1503–5, before moving to the court of the Elector Joachim I of Brandenburg for about the years 1506–8. In Germany he was often known as "Jacop Walch", probably from "Wälsch" meaning foreigner, a term especially used for Italians.
He may have returned to Venice with Philip the Handsome of Burgundy
, for whom he later worked in the Netherlands. By March of 1510 he was working for Philip's successor Archduchess Margaret
in Brussels and Mechelen. In January 1511 he fell ill and made a will, and in March the Archduchess gave him a pension for life, on account of his age and weakness ("debilitation et vieillesse"). By 1516 he had died, leaving the Archduchess in possession of twenty-three engraving plates, which since many of his plates were probably engraved on both sides, means some engravings may not have survived.
Map of Venice
, for which a privilege was granted to its publisher in 1500, recording that the work had taken three years. This clearly drew on the work of many surveyors, but was a spectacular feat nonetheless, and caused a considerable stir from the first. It was later updated by others to reflect major new building projects in a second state of the print.
Apart from the Map of Venice, he produced two other woodcuts, both of men and satyrs, which were the largest and most impressive figurative woodcuts yet produced, and which established the Italian tradition of fine, large, woodcuts for the following decades. These may have also been produced before 1500; they are clearly strongly influenced by Mantegna
.
Twenty years later Dürer tried unsuccessfully to get the Archduchess Margaret, Habsburg Regent of the Netherlands, to give him a manuscript book she had on the subject by de' Barberi, by then dead; the book has not survived.
's , which was bound up in December 1504, which gives further evidence as to dating. De' Barberi had probably made some engravings before leaving Italy, but his best engravings (and perhaps all of them) were probably done after his move to Germany in 1500.
Some of his paintings are dated as: 1500, 1503, 1504, 1508. Documents relating to his employment by Maximilian suggest his work was to include illuminating manuscripts, but no work in this medium has been generally attributed to him. His only generally accepted drawing
is a Cleopatra in the British Museum
, apparently done as a study for an engraving which has not survived.
and to Giovanni Bellini
, but has a languorous quality all its own. Apart from Dürer, the influence of Mantegna
's technique also appears in what are probably the earlier engravings, done around the turn of the century, with parallel hatching. His engravings are mostly small, showing just a few figures. Truculent satyrs feature in several prints; there are a number of mythological subjects, including two Sacrifices to Priapus.
The earlier prints show figures with "small heads and somewhat shapeless bodies, with sloping shoulders and thick torsos supported by slender legs" — also seen in his paintings. Probably from a middle period come several nudes, the most famous being Apollo and Diana, St Sebastian and the Three Bound Captives. In these his ability to organise the whole composition has greatly improved.
In a final group, the style becomes more Italianate, and the compositions more complex. These have an enigmatic, haunting atmosphere, and a very refined technique. Levenson has proposed that they date from his period in the Netherlands and were influenced by the young Lucas van Leyden
.
His paintings are mostly portraits or half-length groups of religious figures. He painted a live Sparrowhawk(National Gallery, London
), which is probably a fragment of a larger work. The very early still-life of a Partridge, gauntlets, and crossbow bolt (Alte Pinakothek
, Munich
) is often called the first small scale trompe l'oeil
painting since antiquity; it may well have been the cover or reverse of a portrait (however, a fragmentary panel
by another Venetian, Vittorio Carpaccio, has a trompe l'oeil letter-rack of about 1490 on the reverse). In the Gemäldegalerie, Berlin
there is a Portrait of a German Man and a religious subject. The Louvre
has a religious group, and Philadelphia a pair of figures.
A disputed but famous work, the Portrait of Fra Luca Pacioli is in the Museo di Capodimonte
in Naples
. This shows the Franciscan
mathematician and expert on perspective
demonstrating geometry at a table on which lie his own Summa and a work by Euclid
. He is accompanied by a not clearly identified student. The work is signed "IACO. BAR VIGEN/NIS 1495".
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
painter
Painting
Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a surface . The application of the medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush but other objects can be used. In art, the term painting describes both the act and the result of the action. However, painting is...
and printmaker with a highly individual style. He moved from Venice to Germany in 1500, thus becoming the first Italian Renaissance artist of stature to work in Northern Europe. His few surviving paintings (about twelve) include the first known example of trompe l'oeil
Trompe l'oeil
Trompe-l'œil, which can also be spelled without the hyphen in English as trompe l'oeil, is an art technique involving extremely realistic imagery in order to create the optical illusion that the depicted objects appear in three dimensions.-History in painting:Although the phrase has its origin in...
since antiquity. His twenty-nine engraving
Engraving
Engraving is the practice of incising a design on to a hard, usually flat surface, by cutting grooves into it. The result may be a decorated object in itself, as when silver, gold, steel, or glass are engraved, or may provide an intaglio printing plate, of copper or another metal, for printing...
s and three very large woodcut
Woodcut
Woodcut—occasionally known as xylography—is a relief printing artistic technique in printmaking in which an image is carved into the surface of a block of wood, with the printing parts remaining level with the surface while the non-printing parts are removed, typically with gouges...
s were also highly influential.
Life
His place and date of birth are unknown, but he was described as a VenetianVenice
Venice is a city in northern Italy which is renowned for the beauty of its setting, its architecture and its artworks. It is the capital of the Veneto region...
by contemporaries, including Albrecht Dürer
Albrecht Dürer
Albrecht Dürer was a German painter, printmaker, engraver, mathematician, and theorist from Nuremberg. His prints established his reputation across Europe when he was still in his twenties, and he has been conventionally regarded as the greatest artist of the Northern Renaissance ever since...
("van Venedig geporn"), and as 'old and weak' in 1511, so dates of between 1450 and 1470 have been proposed. Since the earlier part of the range would have him achieve sudden prominence at the age of nearly fifty, the later part would seem more likely. There have also been suggestions he was of German extraction; but it now seems clear he was Italian; there are surviving documents of his in Italian addressed to Germans. He signed most of his engravings with a caduceus
Caduceus
The caduceus is the staff carried by Hermes in Greek mythology. The same staff was also borne by heralds in general, for example by Iris, the messenger of Hera. It is a short staff entwined by two serpents, sometimes surmounted by wings...
, the sign of Mercury
Mercury (mythology)
Mercury was a messenger who wore winged sandals, and a god of trade, the son of Maia Maiestas and Jupiter in Roman mythology. His name is related to the Latin word merx , mercari , and merces...
, and the Munich still-life (right) with this below his name: "Jac.o de barbarj p 1504" on the painted piece of paper. He was probably not of the important Venetian Barbaro family as he was never listed in that family's genealogy.
Nothing is known about his first decades, although Alvise Vivarini
Alvise Vivarini
Alvise or Luigi Vivarini, , was an Italian painter, the leading Venetian artist before Giovanni Bellini. Like Bellini, he was part of a dynasty of painters. His father was Antonio Vivarini and his uncle, with whom he may have trained, was Bartolomeo Vivarini...
has been suggested as his master. He left Venice for Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
in 1500, and thereafter is better documented. There he worked for the Emperor Maximilian I
Maximilian I, Holy Roman Emperor
Maximilian I , the son of Frederick III, Holy Roman Emperor and Eleanor of Portugal, was King of the Romans from 1486 and Holy Roman Emperor from 1493 until his death, though he was never in fact crowned by the Pope, the journey to Rome always being too risky...
in Nuremberg for a year, then in various places for Frederick the Wise of Saxony
Saxony
The Free State of Saxony is a landlocked state of Germany, contingent with Brandenburg, Saxony Anhalt, Thuringia, Bavaria, the Czech Republic and Poland. It is the tenth-largest German state in area, with of Germany's sixteen states....
in 1503–5, before moving to the court of the Elector Joachim I of Brandenburg for about the years 1506–8. In Germany he was often known as "Jacop Walch", probably from "Wälsch" meaning foreigner, a term especially used for Italians.
He may have returned to Venice with Philip the Handsome of Burgundy
Duchy of Burgundy
The Duchy of Burgundy , was heir to an ancient and prestigious reputation and a large division of the lands of the Second Kingdom of Burgundy and in its own right was one of the geographically larger ducal territories in the emergence of Early Modern Europe from Medieval Europe.Even in that...
, for whom he later worked in the Netherlands. By March of 1510 he was working for Philip's successor Archduchess Margaret
Margarete of Austria
Margaret of Austria was, by her two marriages, Princess of Asturias and Duchess of Savoy, and was appointed Governor of the Habsburg Netherlands from 1507 to 1515 and again from 1519 to 1530.-Early life:...
in Brussels and Mechelen. In January 1511 he fell ill and made a will, and in March the Archduchess gave him a pension for life, on account of his age and weakness ("debilitation et vieillesse"). By 1516 he had died, leaving the Archduchess in possession of twenty-three engraving plates, which since many of his plates were probably engraved on both sides, means some engravings may not have survived.
Work
Map of Venice and other woodcuts
His earliest documented work is his huge (1.315 x 2.818 metres, from six blocks) and impressive woodcut aerial viewAerial View
Aerial View is the fourth studio album by the German band Blackmail. The album was released on Friday, January 13, 2006 under City Slang Records. The album is noted for its harsh guitar melodies and mellow vocals. Crediting the album release, the band's website released a promotional e-card with...
Map of Venice
Venice
Venice is a city in northern Italy which is renowned for the beauty of its setting, its architecture and its artworks. It is the capital of the Veneto region...
, for which a privilege was granted to its publisher in 1500, recording that the work had taken three years. This clearly drew on the work of many surveyors, but was a spectacular feat nonetheless, and caused a considerable stir from the first. It was later updated by others to reflect major new building projects in a second state of the print.
Apart from the Map of Venice, he produced two other woodcuts, both of men and satyrs, which were the largest and most impressive figurative woodcuts yet produced, and which established the Italian tradition of fine, large, woodcuts for the following decades. These may have also been produced before 1500; they are clearly strongly influenced by Mantegna
Andrea Mantegna
Andrea Mantegna was an Italian painter, a student of Roman archeology, and son in law of Jacopo Bellini. Like other artists of the time, Mantegna experimented with perspective, e.g., by lowering the horizon in order to create a sense of greater monumentality...
.
Contacts with Dürer
By the time the Map of Venice was published de' Barberi had already left for Germany, where he met Dürer, who he may have already known from Dürer's first Italian trip (a passage in a letter of Dürer's is ambiguous). They discussed human proportion, not obviously one of de' Barberi's strengths, but Dürer was evidently fascinated by what he had to say, though he recorded that de' Barberi had not told him everything he knew:Twenty years later Dürer tried unsuccessfully to get the Archduchess Margaret, Habsburg Regent of the Netherlands, to give him a manuscript book she had on the subject by de' Barberi, by then dead; the book has not survived.
Dating of artwork
De' Barberi spent a year in Nuremberg, where Dürer lived, in 1500-01, and influences flowed in both directions between him and Dürer for a number of years. None of his engravings are dated, so much of the dating of them depends on resemblances to dated prints by Dürer; this is complicated by uncertainty in some cases as to who was influencing who. Five of his engravings were in an album of Hartmann SchedelHartmann Schedel
Hartmann Schedel was a German physician, humanist, historian, and one of the first cartographers to use the printing press. He was born in Nuremberg...
's , which was bound up in December 1504, which gives further evidence as to dating. De' Barberi had probably made some engravings before leaving Italy, but his best engravings (and perhaps all of them) were probably done after his move to Germany in 1500.
Some of his paintings are dated as: 1500, 1503, 1504, 1508. Documents relating to his employment by Maximilian suggest his work was to include illuminating manuscripts, but no work in this medium has been generally attributed to him. His only generally accepted drawing
Drawing
Drawing is a form of visual art that makes use of any number of drawing instruments to mark a two-dimensional medium. Common instruments include graphite pencils, pen and ink, inked brushes, wax color pencils, crayons, charcoal, chalk, pastels, markers, styluses, and various metals .An artist who...
is a Cleopatra in the British Museum
British Museum
The British Museum is a museum of human history and culture in London. Its collections, which number more than seven million objects, are amongst the largest and most comprehensive in the world and originate from all continents, illustrating and documenting the story of human culture from its...
, apparently done as a study for an engraving which has not survived.
Engravings
His style is related to his possible master, Alvise VivariniAlvise Vivarini
Alvise or Luigi Vivarini, , was an Italian painter, the leading Venetian artist before Giovanni Bellini. Like Bellini, he was part of a dynasty of painters. His father was Antonio Vivarini and his uncle, with whom he may have trained, was Bartolomeo Vivarini...
and to Giovanni Bellini
Giovanni Bellini
Giovanni Bellini 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...
, but has a languorous quality all its own. Apart from Dürer, the influence of Mantegna
Andrea Mantegna
Andrea Mantegna was an Italian painter, a student of Roman archeology, and son in law of Jacopo Bellini. Like other artists of the time, Mantegna experimented with perspective, e.g., by lowering the horizon in order to create a sense of greater monumentality...
's technique also appears in what are probably the earlier engravings, done around the turn of the century, with parallel hatching. His engravings are mostly small, showing just a few figures. Truculent satyrs feature in several prints; there are a number of mythological subjects, including two Sacrifices to Priapus.
The earlier prints show figures with "small heads and somewhat shapeless bodies, with sloping shoulders and thick torsos supported by slender legs" — also seen in his paintings. Probably from a middle period come several nudes, the most famous being Apollo and Diana, St Sebastian and the Three Bound Captives. In these his ability to organise the whole composition has greatly improved.
In a final group, the style becomes more Italianate, and the compositions more complex. These have an enigmatic, haunting atmosphere, and a very refined technique. Levenson has proposed that they date from his period in the Netherlands and were influenced by the young Lucas van Leyden
Lucas van Leyden
Lucas van Leyden , also named either Lucas Hugensz or Lucas Jacobsz, was a Dutch engraver and painter, born and mainly active in Leiden...
.
Paintings
National Gallery, London
The National Gallery is an art museum on Trafalgar Square, London, United Kingdom. Founded in 1824, it houses a collection of over 2,300 paintings dating from the mid-13th century to 1900. The gallery is an exempt charity, and a non-departmental public body of the Department for Culture, Media...
), which is probably a fragment of a larger work. The very early still-life of a Partridge, gauntlets, and crossbow bolt (Alte Pinakothek
Alte Pinakothek
The Alte Pinakothek is an art museum situated in the Kunstareal in Munich, Germany. It is one of the oldest galleries in the world and houses one of the most famous collections of Old Master paintings...
, Munich
Munich
Munich The city's motto is "" . Before 2006, it was "Weltstadt mit Herz" . Its native name, , is derived from the Old High German Munichen, meaning "by the monks' place". The city's name derives from the monks of the Benedictine order who founded the city; hence the monk depicted on the city's coat...
) is often called the first small scale trompe l'oeil
Trompe l'oeil
Trompe-l'œil, which can also be spelled without the hyphen in English as trompe l'oeil, is an art technique involving extremely realistic imagery in order to create the optical illusion that the depicted objects appear in three dimensions.-History in painting:Although the phrase has its origin in...
painting since antiquity; it may well have been the cover or reverse of a portrait (however, a fragmentary panel
Two Venetian Ladies
Two Venetian Ladies is a painting by the Italian Renaissance artist Vittore Carpaccio.The painting, believed to be a quarter of the original work, was executed around 1490 and shows two unknown Venetian ladies. The top portion of the panel, called Hunting on the Lagoon is in the Getty Museum, and...
by another Venetian, Vittorio Carpaccio, has a trompe l'oeil letter-rack of about 1490 on the reverse). In the Gemäldegalerie, Berlin
Gemäldegalerie, Berlin
The Gemäldegalerie is an art museum in Berlin, Germany. It holds one of the world's leading collections of European art from the 13th to the 18th centuries. It is located on Kulturforum west of Potsdamer Platz. Its collection includes masterpieces from such artists as Albrecht Dürer, Lucas...
there is a Portrait of a German Man and a religious subject. The Louvre
Louvre
The Musée du Louvre – in English, the Louvre Museum or simply the Louvre – is one of the world's largest museums, the most visited art museum in the world and a historic monument. A central landmark of Paris, it is located on the Right Bank of the Seine in the 1st arrondissement...
has a religious group, and Philadelphia a pair of figures.
A disputed but famous work, the Portrait of Fra Luca Pacioli is in the Museo di Capodimonte
Museo di Capodimonte
The National Museum of Capodimonte is located in the Palace of Capodimonte, a grand Bourbon palazzo in Naples, Italy. The museum is the prime repository of Neapolitan painting and decorative art, with several important works from other Italian schools of painting, and some important Ancient Roman...
in Naples
Naples
Naples is a city in Southern Italy, situated on the country's west coast by the Gulf of Naples. Lying between two notable volcanic regions, Mount Vesuvius and the Phlegraean Fields, it is the capital of the region of Campania and of the province of Naples...
. This shows the Franciscan
Franciscan
Most Franciscans are members of Roman Catholic religious orders founded by Saint Francis of Assisi. Besides Roman Catholic communities, there are also Old Catholic, Anglican, Lutheran, ecumenical and Non-denominational Franciscan communities....
mathematician and expert on perspective
Perspective (graphical)
Perspective in the graphic arts, such as drawing, is an approximate representation, on a flat surface , of an image as it is seen by the eye...
demonstrating geometry at a table on which lie his own Summa and a work by Euclid
Euclid
Euclid , fl. 300 BC, also known as Euclid of Alexandria, was a Greek mathematician, often referred to as the "Father of Geometry". He was active in Alexandria during the reign of Ptolemy I...
. He is accompanied by a not clearly identified student. The work is signed "IACO. BAR VIGEN/NIS 1495".