'Adoration of the Magi' (c. 1460–1470) by Lazzaro Bastiani

Good evening. Welcome to this Christmas episode of Cocktails with a Curator. I am Xavier Salomon, the Deputy Director and Peter Jay Sharp Chief Curator at The Frick. Merry Christmas to everyone. So today we travel, ideally, to Bethlehem. Of course, today is Christmas Day, one of the most celebrated holidays in the world these days. It is, of course, worth remembering that Christmas begins on this site that I'm showing you. And this is the Basilica of the Nativity in Bethlehem. The 25th of December, traditionally, since at least the early Middle Ages, has been identified as the birthday, the day when Jesus Christ was born in Bethlehem. We all know, of course, the story of Mary and Joseph traveling from Nazareth to Bethlehem. This is at the time of a census. The Romans, who at that time were governing Israel, the Holy Land, called for a census of all citizens. And so Mary travels to Bethlehem, the birthplace of her family. And while there, on the night between the 24th and 25th of December, she gives birth in a cave, a stable. There are different sort of descriptions of the space. And that is because all the hotels, all the taverns and hostels in Bethlehem are filled because people are coming for the census. And so the only place they can find is this place, and there she gives birth. The Basilica of the Nativity was built on the site, supposedly, of this event. And this is at the core of the basilica, the shrine. Once you walk down into it, you are in the space, which is the cave, the stable, where Christ was traditionally, according to the legend, born. And there on the left, you see the altar. And under the altar, where you see that star, is supposedly the site where Mary gives birth. Because of Christmas, I am drinking cranberry bourbon. Very easy cocktail on ice, equal parts of bourbon and cranberry juice. It comes out very pink, reddish-looking, and it's very festive. Cheers. Of course, Christmas is now celebrated by people all over the world. And for reasons often that are nothing to do, of course, with religion, it's not celebrated only by Christians. And it has become one of the most popular holidays. In fact, it is highly unlikely that Jesus Christ was born on the 25th of December. And that is mainly for the reason that the Romans would have never organized a census anywhere in the middle of winter. The census would have probably been organized in the spring, and it's much more likely that the historic Christ was born probably some point in spring. But the festivity of the Nativity of Christ was associated very early on with the winter solstice, which was celebrated by the Romans on the 25th of December. So this is a festivity which is clearly about Christianity and that religion, but it's also about, really, a celebration of the winter and the winter solstice. Now, when we think of the Nativity in art, I'm showing you one of many, many examples. We think of paintings like this, and this is Correggio's Nativity. This is in Dresden. But, you know, you have a very traditional scene, of course, Christ in the manger, the Virgin Mary and Saint Joseph usually in the background, the angels, the shepherds coming to worship the baby Jesus. Of course, because of this, I would like today to talk about a Nativity scene. And while it is true that most museums in the world have a large number of images of this event, one of the most commonly represented events in the Western world, in the Christian world, and that is because, of course, Christmas and Easter are the two main festivities of Christianity. So the birth and then the death on the cross of Christ and the resurrection are really amongst the most commonly represented images in the Christian world. But we don't have any scenes of the Nativity at the Frick. Frick was very reticent in buying religious pictures. He liked portraits, he liked landscapes, he liked pictures he could live with. We don't really know much about his background, of course, religious background. Of course, his background was a Christian one. His family were Mennonites. But, you know, even though he had this Christian-Protestant background, he didn't seem to be particularly keen on religious scenes. And the only two ones he bought during his lifetime, he bought four years before his death, and were Gerard David's deposition from the cross, which he bought in 1915, and, of course, the Bellini Saint Francis, which he bought in the same year. But we could also argue that the Bellini Saint Francis is, in many ways, not so much of a religious painting. It's much more of a landscape or a portrait in some ways. What I would like to talk about this evening is a painting that was produced also in Venice at exactly the same time when the Bellini Saint Francis was painted. And, of course, I don't want to make an unfair comparison. We're talking about two very different works of art in terms of quality and in terms of the mastery of the artist. But this is a very fascinating painting to me, and it's Lazzaro Bastiani's Adoration of the Magi. This was not acquired by Frick himself. It was acquired later on. It was actually acquired the year of the foundation of the museum, in 1935, so exactly 85 years ago. And even though it doesn't actually show the Nativity of Christ, it shows the Adoration of the Magi, which, of course, is celebrated on the Feast of the Epiphany on January 6th, I'm cheating a little bit because, as I say, we don't really have a Nativity scene at the Frick. So this is as close as we can get to the Nativity. But I would like to talk about this not just because of its subject matter but also because of the artist who painted it. Now, when you look at this work, you realize, if you look closely, that it's actually representing a series of connected events. It's set in a wide landscape, but at the very background you see a large number of figures. And these figures, when you look closely enough, are always effectively the same figures. And so what this is showing is the journey of the Magi. The Magi are these three mythical kings who are alerted to the birth of the Messiah by a star. They follow the star, which, of course, brings them first to Jerusalem, where they meet with King Herod, and then to the manger, to the stable in Bethlehem, where they give the child three precious gifts, gold, frankincense, and myrrh. And this, again, it's a very commonly depicted scene in the Middle Ages onwards. And, of course, the tradition begins in the Middle Ages that the kings are usually shown three different ages. You see it quite clearly here. The king on the left is young, the middle one is somewhat middle-aged, and the kneeling one in the foreground is older. Also, there is the tradition that one of the kings was African, and in this case the middle figure is shown with darker skin, so presumably referring to this tradition. And they have the mythical names of Baldassar, Melchior, and Gaspar, which, of course, are also names that are attached to the Magis later on. But what you see here in this landscape is the procession of the Magi, the travel, the journey of the Magi, that from a distant land on the horizon arrive to Jerusalem, the city you see in the background, and then, in the foreground, to Bethlehem, to this very odd-looking site. And this, of course, is supposed to be the stable where Christ was born. But it is a combination of a Venetian Renaissance building. You see this sort of dark marble column on the very right edge of the painting with a capital. And, of course, the building is partly built in Verona marble. There are little capitals of the pilasters on the right, which are made of Verona marble. And there are slabs of Verona marble on the floor, on the ground, sort of shaping, in a way, the space around the main scene. The artist, Lazzaro Bastiani, also painted nativities. And this is just to give you one example of a nativity by Lazzaro Bastiani. This is in the Accademia in Venice. And this is a much more traditional scene, as we think, of the nativity. So, again, the stable is this weird wooden structure with Joseph in the background, the Virgin Mary, Christ. And in this case, again, a very luscious landscape, but four saints on each side of this painting. And these are St. Eustace and James on the left and St. Mark and Nicholas on the right. And this painting was commissioned in 1480. Our painting is slightly earlier. Here you see the detail of the nativity scene. Of course, the ox and the donkey are also particularly associated with the scene of the nativity, and they often almost regularly appear in it. And you can see that many of these elements are also in our painting, which is slightly earlier, from the previous decade, from the 1470s. So, again, you see the ox and the donkey behind this wooden structure that is attached to this other stone structure. Joseph is the man kneeling just behind the Virgin Mary. The Virgin Mary is presenting the baby to the kings, the three kings. Each one of them has a gift and is offering the gift. But, of course, the first king, who has knelt down, has already given the gift to Joseph in the background, and Joseph is behind the Virgin Mary. Whenever I look at this painting, I always wonder about that figure of Joseph because he doesn't look like the typical Joseph with a beard that we're used to seeing in these sort of scenes. And I often wonder if it is a portrait of the donor, the person who must have commissioned this painting. We don't know who the painting was commissioned by. We don't know where it was destined for. We don't even know if it was an independent devotional picture or if it was part of a larger ensemble with side scenes as a triptych or a small polyptych. It's quite likely that it was probably just a single devotional picture, but we don't know. The other wonderful element of this painting that I really love are the angels announcing the birth of Christ in the sky. And, of course, the angels are shown on these wonderful little clouds, which look like sort of flying saucers, and there are all these little groups of angels. And this is a prototype. They say they have sort of grouped children in this way that goes back to antiquity and ancient sources. But in this case, all of these kids, all of these angels, are reading from scrolls and presumably singing and announcing the birth of the Messiah. They're also painted in different colors because there was this tradition in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance that angels, according to hierarchies, celestial hierarchies, there were differences between different types of angels. And so those are usually represented in painting in different colors. So you often get red, blue, yellow angels. So who was Lazzaro Bastiani and why is this interesting? Lazzaro Bastiani is an artist who deserves to be better known. We're, in fact, beginning to think at the Frick about a project on Lazzaro Bastiani for the future because this is really one of the best preserved and one of the best pictures by Bastiani. I love the fact that it came to the Frick in 1935, not as a Lazzaro Bastiani. It was actually acquired as a Bartolomeo Vivarini. And Bartolomeo Vivarini is one of the members of a large family workshop, the Vivarini Workshop. They were painters originally from Murano who were active in Venice. And this was the large workshop that was effectively the rival workshop to the Bellini Workshop, to the workshop of Jacopo Bellini and his sons Giovanni and Gentile. And the Vivarini's and the Bellini's are active in Venice exactly at the same time. So here we are in the 1470s when both workshops are flourishing. And this was acquired by the Frick as a great example of the art of Bartolomeo Vivarini. It actually came from an English collection in the nineteenth century and it then went to the collection of J.P. Morgan. And it was from the Morgan heirs that the Frick bought this in 1935. But quickly, soon after this, the attribution was changed. And in fact, even though the traditional attribution to Vivarini was approved and promoted by Bernard Berenson, the great art historian, a number of other art historians already started questioning this soon after that. And so when the Frick acquired the painting, there were already pre-existing optional attributions, two to other painters from Murano, from Andrea da Murano and Quirizio da Murano, both artists that are documented in Venice at the time but of whom we actually know fairly little. And these attributions were then superseded by the attribution which now encounters unanimous approval to Lazzaro Bastiani. And so comparing this work to other works that are signed and documented by Bastiani, like the nativity that I just showed you in Venice, we're all fairly confident that this is one of Bastiani's works. This is really part of what art historians do. A lot of these attributions are made on stylistic grounds. It's based on connoisseurship, on the eye of the art historian, the experience of the art historian. And so looking at details between these works by the same artist, we can reach a chronology and an attribution of these works. So this is a Lazzaro Bastiani from the 1470s. But let me tell you a little bit about Lazzaro Bastiani. And Lazzaro Bastiani is clearly an important artist in Venice at the time. And I just gave you two examples. In 1508, he is one of the small group of artists who is called to give estimates on the work of Giorgione on the façade of the Fondaco dei Tedeschi. The Fondaco dei Tedeschi was the German headquarters, mercantile headquarters, in Venice on the Grand Canal. And Giorgione and the young Titian had painted frescoes on this building. Unfortunately, they're all lost. This that I'm showing you on the left is one of the remaining fragments from that fresco cycle by Giorgione, very, very damaged, of course. But these frescoes, according to all sources, were incredibly spectacular and one of the greatest commissions in the early sixteenth century in Venice. And Lazzaro Bastiani was one of the people called to appraise these frescoes, to help deciding how much Giorgione was going to be paid. The other interesting thing is that we have evidence that, again, in the 1470s, 60s, and 70s, Lazzaro Bastiani was paid for paintings as much as members of the Bellini family. So even though I don't want to sort of say this too strongly, but of course Bellini is one of the greatest geniuses of Italian painting and quality-wise, it's clearly an incredibly accomplished painter compared to Lazzaro Bastiani. But we need to go back to the fifteenth century to understand that an artist like Bastiani was considered an equal, in many ways, to Bellini. What did Bastiani paint? He was well known for portraits, and here I'm showing you a surviving portrait of Doge Francesco Foscari. This is in the Museo Correr in Venice. And what you see here is obviously the profile image of the Doge, but you see also Bastiani's attention to textiles and to the depiction of precious textiles, which is something that, as we will see, returns in his work over and over again, and it's clearly a characteristic also of the Frick picture. He was known for large narrative paintings, and this is a very large canvas which was part of a cycle of canvases for the Scuola of San Giovanni Evangelista. Venice had a series of scuole, schools, which, of course, are not what we think of as a school today. A scuola in Venice was a charitable lay institution where citizens of the city would join and would then be dedicated to charitable activities. And most of these scuole, these lay confraternities, were decorated with these large canvases known as teleri, and they were done often by a combination of artists. And so the teleri for the Scuola of San Giovanni Evangelista were done by a combination of artists, like Bellini, like Gentile Bellini, like Vittorio Belliniano, like Mansuetti, and like Lazzaro Bastiani. And this is the canvas by Bastiani showing an episode to do with the relics of the cross that the Scuola of San Giovanni Evangelista held, a very precious relic that they had. But when you look at this painting, you realize that on the left and on the right there are groups of contemporary citizens in Venice. And these, again, are portraits of members of the confraternity. Bastiani himself was a member of the confraternity of Saint Jerome. And here you notice not only this attention to portraiture but also the interest of Bastiani in architecture. And if you remember back to the stone building in the Frick, Adoration of the Magi, and the wooden structure, you understand that Bastiani is someone who, and you will see this again, is often interested in architectural depictions. These are two canvases, also in Venice, to do with stories of Saint Jerome. This is the death of Saint Jerome and this is the Last Communion of Saint Jerome. And again, you see this use of architecture as a setting for these scenes, which is something that also the Bellinis and the Vivarini workshops did. So Lazaro Bastiani is really at the center of these two other rival workshops, but he's also in Venice at a time when he's looking at other artists like Andrea Mantegna, who was, of course, earlier on active in Padua. And he's also known later on, Bastiani traditionally, as the master of Vittore Carpaccio, another great painter of narrative scenes. This is the nativity that I showed you before, but again, to point out this attention to architecture in the buildings in the background, but the wooden structure in the foreground, but also the attention to precious details. And this is just a detail of the Cope of Saint Nicholas, very beautifully depicted, with a pattern in presumably damask velvet, which is very similar to the pattern of one of the magis in the Frick picture. The Frick picture, as I said, was probably a devotional painting. This is to give you some examples of other similar paintings. This is a Virgin and Child crowned by angels with the Trinity above. So you have the dove of the Holy Ghost and God the Father, and, of course, the baby Jesus being the third person of the Trinity. This is in the Polo di Pezzoli Museum in Milan, a painting more or less contemporary from the same decade as the Frick picture. And again, you can see the lavish fabric of the Virgin Mary, again, very similar, with a similar pattern to the Frick and Venice pictures. This is another devotional picture by Lazzaro Bastiani in the Musée Bonnat in Bayonne, in France. And this reminds us of a very interesting document, which tells us that a man called Antonio Corradi, who was living in Pera, which is the European side of the Golden Horn in Istanbul, writes to Venice to ask for a painting of the Blessing Christ, a devotional, small devotional picture of Christ, from Lazzaro Bastiani. And in the document he says that he would like to have this work by Lazzaro Bastiani, and if Lazzaro Bastiani could not do it, then he would like to have it painted by Bellini. So again, it gives you the sense of how certain patrons, in this case this man Corradi, considered Bastiani as their first choice before even Bellini, which may sound incredible to us today, but clearly was something that was happening at the time in Venice. As I say, the cost of a Bellini painting and a Bastiani painting at a certain point was pretty much the same, so they were considered almost equals. This is another interesting painting by Bastiani, and this is in a church in the very, in the deepest south of Italy, in a town called Matera. This is the Franciscan Church of San Francesco. When you look at the background, the organ loft over the altar is actually later, in the seventeenth, probably eighteenth century, made out of panels that were cut out of a polyptych by Lazzaro Bastiani, which was presumably made for Matera. And so this, again, is a very interesting example, something from the early 1470s, of a largish polyptych by Bastiani, made for a town outside of Venice. And one of my favorite works by Bastiani is this incredible Saint Jerome, very large painting, almost not quite life-size, which is also in the south of Italy. This is in Puglia, in the treasury, in the museum, in the Diocesan Museum of Monopoli. And this was made for the Cathedral of Monopoli, again, at the end of the fifteenth century. And it shows Saint Jerome in his study. And what I love about this picture are all the details, the books, the inkstand, the vases, the candle, the crucifix, all of the objects of a scholar, of a humanist studiolo, as it was called at the time. The man who commissioned this painting is the man in front, on the right, praying. And it's a man called, we now know, Saladino Ferro. And Saladino Ferro commissioned a chapel in the Cathedral of Monopoli. He was a man from Monopoli, from Puglia, and he commissioned this chapel dedicated to Saint Jerome, where this would have been the altar. Of course, the Cathedral of Monopoli was altered a number of times, and of course, what you see today in the cathedral is very different, and the painting is in the local museum. Saladino Ferro was a doctor, but even more interesting, he was of Jewish origins, and he converted to Christianity. And this was his Christian chapel that he commissioned after his conversion in Monopoli. Bastiani painted a number of patrons, and this is another man that we know about. And this is Giovanni degli Angeli, on the right, kneeling. And Giovanni degli Angeli commissions this lunette for the church of San Donato in Murano. And this is signed and dated by Lazaro Bastiani from 1484, and it shows, again, the Virgin and Child enthroned in this wonderful architectural setting, set, again, in a landscape, with Saint John the Baptist on the left and Saint Donato, the patron saint of the church, on the right. So Bastiani is an artist. We don't actually know when he was born exactly. He was probably born in Venice, even though there are theories that he may have been born in Padua. We don't know where he trained. We know he died in 1512, and he is documented from at least 1456. So in the late 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, all the way to 1512, he is documented as being active in Venice. And, of course, he's there at this very key period where, as I said, he starts at a time when the Bellini and Vivarini workshops are active, but he really dies in 1512, when Titian is already very much on the scene. It's a few years before Titian starts painting some of his most famous large altarpieces in Venice. So he overlaps with Giorgione. He overlaps with Dürer and Dürer's journey to Venice. As I say, he's an artist who hasn't been fully studied, and a lot of work still needs to be done on Bastiani. We know he was active for most of his life in the parish of St. Raphael, of the Caggio di Raffaele, which is a sort of strange area as well for artists in Venice. Most of the active artists at the time were in other parishes, San Leo, Santa Maria Formosa, much closer to the center, to the heart of the Siete di Rialto. The Arcangelo Raffaele is a bit of a peripheral area. So, again, why Bastiani is there, we don't know. We know that his brother, called Marco, was also a painter. So clearly there were two brothers active in this field. But I look forward to working more on Bastiani in the future and to discover more about this picture at the Frick and, of course, the artist's career. I hope you're all spending a wonderful Christmas. And with this, I would like to raise a glass to all of you to thank you for joining me this evening and wishing you all the best for this holiday season.