How Bellini paints the idea of a leader | National Gallery

I think this is a weird and intriguing painting. It's very otherworldly, but also incredibly beautiful. And as a painter, I'm drawn to it. It's one of my favourites in the National Gallery. Hello, I'm Taishan Shirenberg. I'm a painter, and today I'll be talking about one of the National Gallery's star pieces, the portrait of doge Leonardo Loredan by the great Giovanni Bellini. In 1501, Leonardo Loredan is the newly appointed doge, or leader of the Venetian Republic, and he's commissioned the acclaimed Bellini to paint his portrait. But this is unlike the portraits of previous doges. The composition, with the figure turned slightly away from us, the extremely controlled, contained body separated from the viewer by the marble ledge, the empty background, these all add up to a strange stillness and power which verges on the otherworldly. Its singularity or weirdness, in a way, is what makes it so remarkable. The most modern aspect of the image is the blank, bright blue background. It's been suggested it is the sky or the sea. And if you've ever visited Venice, you might recall how the city feels suspended between the two. But I feel it's more symbolic than literal. It is painted using ultramarine made from a semi-precious stone, lapis lazuli, found in present-day Afghanistan. Lapis lazuli was incredibly expensive and usually reserved for important religious figures. Think of the Virgin Mary's vibrant blue cloak. Yes, it possibly represents a sky, but it also symbolises Venice's place as a vast trading empire and the riches of the city. Just the price of this pigment alone. By extension, it's a comment on Leonardo Lauredine's own trading connections, wealth and nobility. Then we have the figure separated from the viewer by a red marble ledge. He seems to inhabit a different sphere to us, clothed in the stylised and arcane official costume of the doge. It reminds us of a more eastern aesthetic with a broad-shouldered cloak with its unusual buttons. Are they acorns or bells? And the strangely shaped hat or crown called the corno ducale, tightly held in place by an exquisite gold band. The cloak and the corno are made of the same sumptuous pale gold and silver silk from Damascus in present-day Syria. Advertising another of the exquisite treasures from Venice's vast trading empire, it's the sheen of the fabric and the intricate stitching painted in incredible detail that catches my eye. It could only have been achieved with oil. My favourite technical bit of the painting is a slight blurring of the corno as it recedes on the doge's head before the pattern comes back into pin-sharp detail as it rises in the back. Beautifully observed and exquisitely recreated in paint by a masterful artist. And finally, we get to the face of Lauredine, whom the whole picture is really about. We only see the face. No hair or ears are visible. His watchful, hooded eyes, the narrow mouth and creases in his cheeks suggest a ruthless political survivor whose battles have made him wise and judicious. We will never know whether Lauredine really looked like this, but Bellini has created an idealised image of a leader. He has created an archetype that is timeless. The artist has taken such care in rendering the material qualities we see, the difference between the skin of the face and the sumptuous cloth, the air of the background and the marble of the ledge. I can't help but think that in so doing he's also quietly questioning this idea of leadership. Why is the face so soft when the other elements are so pin-sharp? The garments of state seem suffocating, they're constraining and heavy and uncomfortable, implying the weight of the highest office of state. The only free and unconstrained elements are the two laces hanging from the camaro, the linen undercap. The dynamics of portrait commissions are very unpredictable. It should be a collaboration, but usually ends up as a battle of wills. The artist has most of the power because they wield the brush, but ultimately, if we are honest, the artist still relies on the approval and payment from the commissioner. I expect the new Doge would have made certain demands when he commissioned this painting, and Bellini, a respected and celebrated artist in his 70s at this point, would have made his ideas clear as well. We will never know what decisions in the portrait were made by whom, but it's fun to speculate. Portraits, as opposed to figurative art in general, were usually commissioned by the great and the wealthy to commemorate themselves or their family and peers, to celebrate their virtue, beauty and importance. And successful portraitists were the ones who understood that flattery pays. Look closely and you can see the strategies skilled artists undertook to be true to their artistic vision and yet fulfill the brief. Bellini has created a painted version of a Roman imperial bust with all its connotations of empire and power, but through the softness of the sitter's features he reminds us that Leonardo Loredan is in fact just the latest person to step into the centuries-old role of Doge, to don the strange uniform and accept the heavy responsibilities of power. These days, portraiture is more accessible, it has been democratised through historical developments, and more recently photography. We're all involved in these kinds of balancing acts between authenticity and beauty, or making arresting images but striving to be truthful and making portraits of ourselves and our peers. Now let's take a closer look at the protagonist, the sitter and the artist. Leonardo Loredan was a Venetian nobleman who had made his fortune through trade in the Levant and in Africa. He held various powerful positions within Venice's government before being elected as the 75th Doge, during a period of huge upheaval. As Doge he had to deal with the military aggressions from the Pope, the Holy Roman Empire and France, amongst others. Perhaps the most impactful disaster happened about 50 years before Loredan was elected Doge. In 1453 the Ottoman Empire sacked Constantinople, ending the Byzantine Empire, and so Venice's access to and monopoly of Eastward trading routes was compromised. New maritime superpowers such as Spain and Portugal were finding their own trade routes, undermining Venetian trading power. So the gorgeous fabrics and exquisite pigments in this painting that Venice had taken for granted now had to be shared with the rest of Europe. As Doge, Leonardo Loredan was a powerful and connected man. I expect he would have known Giovanni Bellini personally. Bellini came from a renowned artist family and was connected to the well-established Venetian workshop headed by Giacomo Bellini, his father or uncle, nobody's quite sure, where he trained and worked with his equally famous brother Gentile. From 1480 Giovanni worked directly for the Doge's Palace as conservator, looking after all the artworks there. He also was commissioned to make many new works. But it was his experimentation with a relatively new medium, pure oil painting, that led to a revolution in painting. His rich colours, sensuous modelling and atmospheric landscapes had a huge influence on the Venetian school of painting and the likes of Giorgione and Titian and helped usher in the High Renaissance. Bellini's ability to capture the background, face and especially the clothing were only possible with oil paint. Until the early 1400s, artists used the ancient technique of egg tempera. Dry pigments were mixed with a medium made of egg yolks and some water. This created a semi-opaque, chalky, fast-drying paint that was beautiful to use, but dried incredibly quickly. This meant artists painted in layers and blended by using small, cross-hatching marks, which made more nuance to realistic effects harder to achieve. Artists were already experimenting by adding some oil to the mixture to extend the drying time. This was called tempera grassa, which was a kind of mayonnaise by the sound of it. But it is accepted that the pure oil painting technique we are all familiar with came from Northern Europe, where it was perfected by masters such as Van Eyck and Robert Campin in the early 1400s. Oil paint is made of pigment mixed with an oil, most usually linseed oil or poppy oil. The colour is more luminous because of the way the pigment is suspended, so great for glazing thin layers. Transitions are softer because blending is easier and above all, the artist has much more time to get things right, move things around, fiddle with details because oil paint can take days to dry. It is a beautiful, versatile and very durable medium which lends itself to many painting styles, seen throughout art history from the mid-1400s until today. This portrait is a wonderful document of an incredibly powerful doge at a historically fascinating time for Venice. Bellini captured this moment in a fantastically unusual painting. Enjoy.