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BETWEEN FORM AND REPRESENTATION: THE FRICK ST FRANCIS
Author(s) -
LUGLI EMANUELE
Publication year - 2009
Publication title -
art history
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.1
H-Index - 19
eISSN - 1467-8365
pISSN - 0141-6790
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-8365.2008.00647.x
Subject(s) - painting , representation (politics) , art history , art , subject (documents) , variety (cybernetics) , tree (set theory) , visual arts , computer science , artificial intelligence , mathematics , world wide web , law , mathematical analysis , politics , political science
The subject of Giovanni Bellini's St Francis , currently housed at the Frick Collection in New York, has perplexed viewers for more than five centuries. Scholars have suggested several possible texts, but none of these has been proven unequivocally to be Bellini's reference. Instead of proposing a new written source, this paper focuses on the formal aspects of the painting. It will thus appear that Bellini bent the representational conventions of his time to produce a work of pictorial intelligence. The formal quality of the Frick St Francis is assessed through an analysis of the laurel tree in the left of the painting. Overlooked by many, the tree is the key element of the Frick panel. It is the tree that justifies the variety of exegetical readings, exemplifying as it does a conflation of forms and an experienced handling of visual effects.