Hand-painted in oil
About this Artwork
The blessing gesture as a subject
Christ Blessing is not an episode. It is a formula: the right hand raised in benediction, the left holding a book or an orb, the figure facing the viewer. The gesture is the whole content, and it comes from a tradition of frontal devotional images far older than the panel painting that carries it here. Nine titles in this catalogue turn on blessing, and none of them can be placed at a point in the narrative.
Why the cycle has room for it
A life of Christ told in order needs a beginning and an end. An image of blessing needs neither, which is exactly its use: it was made to be permanently addressed, in a chapel or a private room, rather than read once. Cycles of episodes and images of this kind were produced by the same workshops for different purposes.
The record
The catalogue names Giovanni Bellini, gives 1460 as the date of creation and the Louvre in Paris as the location, and enters the dimensions as 46 by 58 centimetres. The style is Early Renaissance and the artist Italian. The measured palette reads as blue, which the colour reading returns for ten entries in this catalogue against 191 for brown. Nothing on provenance appears in the record.
Sources
7 references- Pádua, João António Bellini de — Getty ULAN
Italian sculptor, architect, active 1725-1748 in Portugal
- Giovanni Bellini — Wikipedia
Giovanni Bellini (Italian: [dʒoˈvanni belˈliːni]; Venetian: Zuane Belin ; c. 1430 – 29 December 1516) was an Italian Renaissance painter, probably the best known of the Bellini family of Venetian painters. He was raised in the household of
- Bellini, Giovanni — Getty ULAN
Venetian painter, 1431/1436-1516
- Blessing Christ — Wikidata
description: painting by Giovanni Bellini (NGA Canada 328); dimensions: 162.7 × 92.4 cm; collection: National Gallery of Canada
- gallery.ca — record for "Blessing Christ"
Primary source record for this work (gallery.ca).
- Christ Blessing (Bellini, 1500) — Wikipedia
Christ Blessing is a painting by Italian Renaissance master Giovanni Bellini created around the year 1500. == Analysis == The portrait depicts Jesus Christ, raising his right hand while gripping a red staff with the other. Christ's wounds a
- Blessing Christ by Giovanni Bellini (Louvre RF 2039) — Wikimedia Commons
High-resolution image of the work, hosted on Wikimedia Commons.
