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Marco Basaiti

Venetian, 1470 - 1530

(not assigned)Venice, Italy, Europe

BiographyItalian painter. He is documented only once, in 1530, when he was recorded in the Mariegola dei Pittori Veneziani (the Venetian painters’ guild) as a painter of figures, but many of his paintings are dated, the earliest in 1496 and the last in 1527. The spelling of his signature varies, and Vasari erroneously believed that two Venetian painters existed, named Marco Bassarini and Marco Bassiti. Ridolfi stated that Basaiti was born in Friuli, while Lanzi asserted that Basaiti was born of Greek parents in Friuli. Babinger convincingly proposed that Basaiti was of Albanian origin; a family of Balkan mercenaries in Venetian pay named Bòzhajt or Bòzhejt was documented in Venice at the beginning of the 16th century. This would explain the variations on Basaiti’s name and also account for his lack of documentation, since Albanian, Greek and Dalmatian communities living in Venice kept to their own laws and usually do not appear in Venetian documents.

Not enough is known about the structure of Venetian workshops at this date to say where Basaiti trained. A signed St Jerome in the Wilderness (Budapest, Mus. F.A.) is a copy of a painting by Cima da Conegliano (Harewood House, W. Yorks); usually such copies could be made only in the master’s studio. The fact that Basaiti received the commission to complete the altarpiece of St Ambrose Enthroned with Saints (1503; Venice, Frari), left unfinished at Alvise Vivarini’s death, might indicate that he was considered the best assistant in Alvise’s workshop and his artistic heir. On the other hand, a Lamentation over the Dead Christ (ex-Kaiser Friedrich Mus., Berlin, destr.), a typical work by Basaiti, had the remains of a signature ‘Iohannes Bellinus p.’. There is evidence to suggest that assistants were exchanged from one workshop to another at this date. The most likely hypothesis is that Basaiti was one of Alvise Vivarini’s assistants and that he kept the workshop running after his master’s death but was also in touch with Cima and Giovanni Bellini. Basaiti’s figures usually have the strong volumetric forms typical of Alvise, but the atmospheric landscape settings are close to Cima, while the compositions and the soft, warm tones in many of Basaiti’s paintings are derived from Giovanni Bellini.

Basaiti’s first extant work, a Portrait of a Boy (Kruishoutem, Veranneman priv. col.; formerly Bennebroek, von Pannwitz priv. col.), shows the sitter behind a parapet in the manner of Antonello da Messina and Alvise Vivarini; its originality lies in the background, no longer a plain wall but an open landscape, comparable to Giovanni Bellini’s backgrounds in paintings of the Virgin and Child. At this date Bellini had not used a landscape background in a portrait, and the idea probably derived from Netherlandish paintings, especially Hans Memling’s work, which were well known in Venice at that date. A group of panels painted by Basaiti between c. 1496 and c. 1500 is stylistically close to Alvise Vivarini: idealized forms with smooth surfaces are painted in bright colours; they include the Portrait of a Boy (London, N.G.), the Virgin and Child with a Donor (Venice, Correr), the signed Sacra conversazione (Padua, Mus. Civ.) and several paintings of the Virgin and Child (Berlin, Gemäldegal.; London, N.G.; Vaduz, Samml. Liechtenstein). Although Basaiti was a conservative painter with a Quattrocento repertory of subjects (he never attempted historical or mythological scenes), he adopted contemporary stylistic developments. Between 1500 and 1505 his paintings have a compositional harmony and proportion that show his awareness of Lorenzo Costa’s proto-classicism, as in St Catherine (Budapest, Mus. F.A.), in two paintings of St Sebastian (Rome, Doria-Pamphili; ex-Kaiser-Friedrich Mus., Berlin, destr.) and in Two Saints and a Dead Christ and Angels (both Venice, Accad.).

After Albrecht Dürer’s second stay in Venice in 1505–6, Basaiti’s style changed abruptly to a Germanic, anti-classical emotionalism, as is evident in the Lamentation over the Dead Christ (Munich, Alte Pin.) and the St Jerome in the Wilderness (sold, Rezzonico sale, Milan, 1898), in which rocks and trees are painted in a particularly Germanic style and the scale of the figures is small in comparison to their settings. Basaiti was also aware of Lombard painting and of the work of Lorenzo Lotto, and a combination of a Germanic, emotional rendering of nature with calm, classicizing figures in the Venetian tradition became typical of him: it is particularly evident in the Resurrected Christ (c. 1510; Milan, Bib. Ambrosiana) and the Calling of the Sons of Zebedee (signed and dated 1510; Venice, Accad.), painted for S Andrea della Certosa. This large altarpiece is one of the most innovative of its date in Venice in the unusually large amount of space given to the landscape—the true subject of the painting. The foreground is given over to a stony shore and a boat, while the sacred event is placed in the middle ground. It is also the first narrative altarpiece to include many figures that are not part of the biblical story. The signed Agony in the Garden (Venice, Accad.) was painted for an altar of the Foscari family in S Giobbe and is dated either 1510 or 1516; the latter date is usually accepted, but on stylistic grounds the earlier date is preferable (Lucco), given its similarity to the Calling in its unusual light effects. These two works were extremely successful, and in 1515 Basaiti painted a replica of the Calling set in a trompe l’oeil frame (Vienna, Ksthist. Mus.). A Lamentation over the Dead Christ (Milan, S Giorgio al Palazzo) was painted about this date for the abbey church of Sesto al Reghena in Friuli; the compact group of figures, compositionally close to a German sculpted Vesperbild, is placed in a calm summer landscape reminiscent of Giorgione or Lotto.

From 1510 to 1520 Basaiti produced portraits in the Giorgionesque idiom, abandoning Antonello’s outdated style. A portrait, probably of Copernicus (ex-Lubomirski Col., Warsaw; untraced), was dated 1513. The Head of the Redeemer (Bergamo, Gal. Accad. Carrara), signed and dated 1517, has the quality of a portrait, the face being individualized and delicately lit. The Portrait of a Man (Bergamo, Gal. Accad. Carrara), signed and dated 1521, shows the calm, imposing figure in front of a broken wall; the figure’s monumentality, equal almost to Titian or Palma Vecchio, is created by the use of large volumetric planes. Other successful paintings of this date include two sacre conversazioni (Urbino, Pal. Ducale; Amsterdam, Rijksmus.), the beautiful Virgin Adoring the Christ Child (Washington, DC, N.G.A.) and the Holy Family with Saints (ex-Böhler Col., Munich; untraced), the latter signed and dated 1519.

By contrast, Basaiti’s contemporary public commissions lack originality: St Peter Enthroned (Venice, S Pietro in Castello) is old-fashioned, while the St George Killing the Dragon (Venice, Accad.), painted for the same church, is even more feeble, although Pietro Carpaccio copied it (Baltimore, MD, Walters A.G.). After 1521 it is difficult to trace the evolution of Basaiti’s style; his last signed and dated work, the Lamentation over the Dead Christ (St Petersburg, Hermitage), is merely a bad replica of an earlier composition (Milan, Brera).

Mauro Lucco. "Basaiti, Marco." In Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online, http://www.oxfordartonline.com.proxy.lib.fsu.edu/subscriber/article/grove/art/T006679 (accessed March 22, 2012).

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