DE BARBARI, JACOPO

DE BARBARI, JACOPO. — Venetian painter and engraver, born probably in Venice between 1440 and 1450, died after 1511. Known in Germany, where he lived for a long time under the name of Jacopo Walsch or Walch, in 1500 he engraved a large view of Venice on behalf of Antonio Koll. From that year until 1504, he was in the service of Emperor Massimiliano, probably in Nuremberg. From 1504 he was court painter to the Elector of Saxony, Federico il Saggio, and subsequently to Count Filippo di Brandeburgo. In 1508 he was in Frankfurt on the Oder in the service of Gioacchino I di Brandeburgo. In 1509 he went to the court of Margherita d'Austria, regent of the Netherlands, who the following year granted him a pension. He also worked in Torgau, Nauburg, Weimar, Wittemberg, and Dresden.

Among his earliest works should be placed a Madonna and Child, two saints, and a female donor in the Federico Museum in Berlin, to which may be related in terms of its figurative arrangement—but is certainly later—a Sacra conversazione now in the Louvre. Stylistically more advanced are the Portrait of a Young Man, dated 1502, which is in a colle-

collection, the Christ of Dresden (1503), contemporary with the images of ss. Barbara and Caterina in the same gallery. Also from 1503 is the Old Woman Embracing a Young Man in the Johnson collection in Philadelphia, while the prodigious Still Life in the Munich gallery dates from 1504. The following year he painted a portrait of a young man in the Vienna gallery; in 1507, the portrait of Enrico di Mecklenburg, now in the Heldring collection in Amsterdam; and in 1508, that of Cardinal Alberto di Brandiburgo in the Basel gallery. To this series of paintings, all signed or initialled by the master, a few others may be added: a Head of Christ in the Weimar Museum, a portrait of a young man in the Berlin gallery, and a Golsteto in that of Dresden. The field of his activity as an engraver is also most interesting. Thirty-three of his works are known, of which thirty are on copper and three on wood. This production may be divided into three groups. To an initial period, preceding the influence exerted on him by Dürer, works such as the Redeemer, Judith, s. Caterina, Apollo Scettante, and so forth should be assigned. To a second period belong the View of Venice of 1500, the Presentation in the Temple, the Adoration of the Magi, etc., works in which the master attempts to abandon his subtle linear technique in pursuit of tonal effects by means of sfumato rendered with crossed strokes. Finally, the engravings displaying characteristics analogous to those of the Pegasus, Mars and Venus, Centaur Pursued by Dragons, and so forth should belong to the third period.

Educated in the Venetian milieu, whose most significant representative was Giovanni Bellini, yet also receptive to the art of Bartolomeo Vivarini and Antonello, Jacopo must have come into contact with the Germanic world at a very early date, perhaps first through frequent periodic journeys and then by settling permanently beyond the Alps. Thus, in his images, distinctly Alemannic characteristics often appear, not only in his acute manner of drawing but also in the physiognomic types. Nevertheless, his solid and deep manner of colouring, which truly models the images, always remained Venetian. Living on the boundary between two epochs and two artistic and spiritual worlds as different as the Venetian and the German, he suggests that he felt and attempted to resolve the contrasts arising from them; and this was certainly no small merit on his part.