Bartolomeo Vivarini Biography | Oil Paintings

Bartolomeo Vivarini worked with Antonello da Messina and was taught the art of oil painting, in 1473 produced the first known oil painting done in Venice now housed in the basilica of San Zanipolo, it is a large altar-piece in nine divisions, representing Augustine and other saints. But, most of his works, are in tempera, his outline is always hard, with good color, with the figures shown as dignified with devout expressions.

Bartolomeo Vivarini's earliest paintings resemble da Messina's but by the mid-1460s, Paduan art influenced his works and he was executing paintings like those of his contemporaries Carlo Crivelli, Marco Zoppo, and Giorgio Schiavone. Like theirs, his works were linear, with decorative schemes incorporating cupids, fruits and vegetation, and classical architectural elements. In the 1470s Bartolomeo Vivarini began to combine his own Paduan lines and Gothic colors with Giovanni Bellini styled formats, soft modeling, and light effects.

This style was up-to-date but archaic, yet won him great success, he maintained a huge and productive studio and received many important commissions in Venice and the provinces. But since Bartolomeo Vivarini never developed beyond this point, his works lapsed into routine and formula, and his popularity waned. The artist's last dated work is from 1499 the year of his death he painted Death of the Virgin now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Art Movement: Renaissance.
Artists Influencing Bartolomeo Vivarini: Antonello da Messina.
Artist Biography compiled by Albert L. Mansour at The World's Artist, with text adapted from Wikipedia.