Monday, September 16, 2019

Giovanni Busi, called Giovanni Cariani (ca. 1485-1547)

attributed to Giovanni Cariani
Portrait of Two Young Men
1518
oil on canvas
Musée du Louvre

Giovanni Cariani
Madonna and Child with St Sebastian
ca. 1519
oil on canvas
Musée du Louvre

attributed to Giovanni Cariani
(formerly attributed to Titian or Giorgione)
Portrait of a Venetian Gentleman
ca. 1510-15
oil on canvas
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Giovanni Cariani
Concert Champêtre
ca. 1517
oil on canvas
National Museum, Warsaw

Giovanni Cariani
Resurrection
with St Jerome, St John the Baptist
and Donors Ottaviano and Domitilla Vimercati
1520
oil on canvas
Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan

"Born ca. 1485 near Bergamo, the westernmost of the Venetian mainland territories, Cariani was trained in Venice, first in Giovanni Bellini's workshop and then among the circle of Giorgione.  In Venice until 1517, he underwent further influences from Titian, Sebastiano del Piombo, and Palma Vecchio, the last of whom also came from Bergamo.  Cariani returned to live in his native city twice, from 1517 to 1523 and again from 1528 to 1530; otherwise he was active in Venice until his death.  The pattern of alternating between two artistic centers, one a sophisticated metropolitan capital and the other a provincial city with strong ties to Lombardy, is reflected in Cariani's style."

– David Alan Brown, from Art for the Nation (National Gallery of Art, Washington DC: 2000)

Giovanni Cariani
Portrait of a Young Woman resting in a Landscape
1522
oil on canvas
Gemäldegalerie, Berlin

Giovanni Cariani
Seven Members of the Albani Family
1519
oil on canvas
private collection

Giovanni Cariani
Portrait of a Young Man with a Green Book
ca. 1510-20
oil on canvas
Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco
(Palace of the Legion of Honor)

attributed to Giovanni Cariani
Portrait of a Woman
ca. 1530-35
oil on canvas
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Giovanni Cariani
Madonna and Child enthroned
with St Apollonia, St Augustine, St Catherine, St Joseph,
St Grata, St Philip Benizzi, St Barbara and Angels
1517-18
oil on canvas
Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan

"It is clear from the beginning of his career that there is a powerful attachment to the aesthetic of the Quattrocento in Cariani's art.  His earliest dated work that survives is of 1519, when he was in Bergamo, but undated paintings exist which may be assigned to the few previous years.  These are in a style that is predominantly quattrocentesque, employed a vocabulary related generically to the late Bellini or the earliest, still Carpaccesque Palma.  The concession to modernity in these paintings is literally superficial, consisting in the enlivening of surface with a textured light, described however with a conservative technique.  Evidence in Cariani's landscape style and in his themes shows willing interest in Giorgione and the early Titian, but his personal gestalt of form – heavy, angular, and disjointed – cannot be reconciled with theirs."

– S.J. Freedberg from Painting in Italy - 1500 to 1600 in the Pelican History of Art series (London, 1971)

Giovanni Cariani
St Sebastian flanked by St Roch and St Margaret
ca. 1520
oil on canvas
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Marseilles

Giovanni Cariani
The Lute Player
ca. 1515
oil on canvas
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Strasbourg

Giovanni Cariani
A Concert
ca. 1518-20
oil on canvas
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Giovanni Cariani
Portrait of a Gentleman holding the Portrait of a Lady
before 1547
oil on canvas
private collection

Giovanni Cariani
Portrait of a Lady
ca. 1515
oil on canvas
Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest

Giovanni Cariani
Portrait of Giovan Antonio Caravaggi
ca. 1520-30
oil on canvas
National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa