Prior to the last quarter of the fifteenth century, portraiture in Venice is mainly confined to votive images and static ducal profiles. The year 1474 marks an important turning point: a new, expressive portrait type emerges through the work of Giovanni Bellini and Antonello da Messina. Their sitters wear few embellishments, and carry no identifying attributes; instead they embody what Philostratus referred to as “the signs of men’s character.” In light of recent monographic exhibitions that have provided the opportunity for closer study of both artists’ portraiture, this paper will examine the relationship between Giovanni Bellini and Antonello by considering several portraits from this early period of 1474 to 1476, with particular attention to Giovanni Bellini’s portrait of Raffaele Zovenzoni (Biblioteca Trivulziana, Milan) as an important point of intersection between the two artists.

Scholars almost unanimously agree in identifying the pair of small, once-joined portraits now in the Robert Lehman Collection as the work cited by Marcantonio Michiel as an opera perfettissima di mano di Iacometto. Hitherto, the Lehman portraits remain the only work assigned with certainty to the Venitiano. They represent an essential point of reference for the reconstruction of the activity of this fascinating yet mysterious painter-miniaturist whom the sources describe as a successful artist, perfectly integrated in the Venetian context. The purpose of this paper is to reexamine and offer a new reading of Jacometto’s masterpiece through comparison with Giovanni Bellini’s Portrait of a Young Boy in Birmingham and Leonardo’s Portrait of Ginevra de’ Benci in Washington. Each sheds light on the Lehman panels’ intended function, sitters’ identities, and allegorical imagery; Bellini’s and Leonardo’s portraits may indeed have served as sources of inspiration for Jacometto’s creation.

Un dipinto autografo — ma spesso dimenticato — di Giovanni Bellini, che ritrae Gabriele Dalla Volta (1468–1537), apre nuove strade nello studio del rapporto tra Bellini e gli ordini religiosi veneziani. Un poliedrico intellettuale e uomo di potere come il Dalla Volta (è stato, oltre a generale dell’ordine degli eremitani agostiniani, editore e architetto) ha fatto parte delle più alte sfere umanistiche veneziane del principio del Cinquecento: è nota infatti la sua amicizia e corrispondenza con Pietro Bembo. La presenza di un suo ritratto accerta l’esistenza di un legame con Giovanni Bellini, che arricchisce il quadro dei rapporti del pittore con la sua stessa città e società. L’obbiettivo della ricerca è inoltre di far luce sulla relazione tra Bellini e l’ordine degli eremitani agostiniani a Venezia, e in particolare con la chiesa di Santo Stefano, alla quale peraltro, stando al Ridolfi, donò “una effigie del Salvatore in atto di benedire.”