Jacopo de' Barbari
Jacopo de' Barbari left behind more spellings of his name than certainties about his life. Documents and contemporaries call him de'Barbari, de Barberi, Barbaro, Barberino, Barbarigo or Barberigo, and these are only some of the variants.
He was an Italian painter, printmaker and miniaturist with a style unlike anyone else's. Fewer than a dozen of his paintings are known to survive. Against that, he left twenty-nine engravings and three very large woodcuts, and those prints proved highly influential.
His career carried him out of Venice and into the courts of Northern Europe, where no Italian Renaissance artist of his stature had worked before him. Why did a Venetian leave home? Who employed him once he arrived? What did the greatest German artist of the age want from him? And why do we still argue about when and where he was born?
Albrecht Dürer wrote of him as "van Venedig geporn", born in Venice, and that is the strongest evidence for where he came from. His actual birthplace and birth date are unknown. By 1511 he was described as 'old and weak', so scholars have proposed birth years anywhere between 1450 and 1470.
The earlier end of that range creates a problem. It would mean he rose to sudden prominence at nearly fifty, which seems unlikely, so the later dates are favored. Some people even believed he was German-born and moved to Italy. That remains only a hypothesis, and researchers have not settled it.
His surname invites another guess, that he belonged to the important Venetian Barbaro family. He was probably not a member, since he never appears in that family's genealogy. Nothing is known about his first decades either. Alvise Vivarini has been suggested as his master, but no document confirms it.
What he did leave is a personal mark. He signed most of his engravings with a caduceus, the sign of Mercury. On the painted piece of paper in a Munich still life he wrote his name another way: "Jac.o de barbarj p 1504".
In 1500 Jacopo left Venice for Germany, and from that point his life is far better documented. The Emperor Maximilian I employed him in Nuremberg for about a year. Frederick the Wise of Saxony then took him on, in various places, during 1503-5.
From around 1506 to 1508 he served at the court of the Elector Joachim I of Brandenburg. Across these years Germans often called him "Jacop Walch". The name probably comes from "Wälsch", a word meaning foreigner that was used especially for Italians.
He may have returned to Venice with Philip the Handsome of Burgundy, whom he later served in the Netherlands. By March 1510 he was working in Brussels and Mechelen for Philip's successor, the Archduchess Margaret.
In January 1511 he fell ill and made a will. In March the Archduchess granted him a pension for life, citing his "debilitation et vieillesse". By 1516 he had died. He left her twenty-three engraving plates, and because many plates were probably cut on both sides, some of his engravings may be lost.
A woodcut measuring 1.345 by 2.818 metres, printed from six separate blocks, is the earliest documented work by Jacopo. It is an aerial view of Venice. In 1500 its publisher was granted a privilege, which recorded that the work had taken three years.
The map clearly drew on the work of many surveyors, yet it was a spectacular achievement all the same. It caused a considerable stir from the start. Other hands later updated it to show major new building projects, producing a second state of the print.
He made two further woodcuts, both showing men and satyrs. They were the largest and most impressive figurative woodcuts produced up to then, and they set the Italian tradition of fine, large woodcuts for decades afterward. They show a strong influence from Mantegna, and they may also date from before 1500.
One of them, the "Triumph of Men Over Satyrs", uses three blocks. It shows the moment just after a battle. Nude men and women walk toward a temple while defeated satyrs are carried along as bound prisoners in baskets.
The scholars Juergen Schulz and David Landau link it to a woodcut called "Battle Between Satyrs and Men". In that later piece, one of the placards directly shows the battle from Jacopo's print. The Venetian architecture behind the figures also recalls Gentile Bellini's "Process in St. Mark's Square", completed in 1496.
By the time the Map of Venice reached print, Jacopo was already in Germany, where he met Dürer. They may have known each other earlier, from Dürer's first trip to Italy, though a passage in one of Dürer's letters is ambiguous on the point. Their conversations turned to human proportion, which was not obviously one of Jacopo's strengths.
Dürer was nonetheless captivated. In an unpublished draft for the introduction to his own book on proportions, he called Jacopo "a charming painter". He said he had been shown a man and a woman made according to measure. He wrote that he would now rather see what Jacopo meant "than behold a new kingdom".
The admiration had a limit. Dürer complained: "Jacobus did not want to show his principles to me clearly, that I saw well."
Twenty years later Dürer tried again. He asked the Archduchess Margaret, Habsburg Regent of the Netherlands, for a manuscript book on the subject that Jacopo had left. By then Jacopo was dead, and Dürer failed to get it. The book has not survived.
Nuremberg was where Dürer lived, and Jacopo spent a year there, in 1500-1. Influence flowed in both directions between them for several years. That exchange makes his engravings hard to date, because none carries a date.
Scholars mostly rely on resemblances to Dürer's dated prints. This is complicated by uncertainty, in some cases, over who was influencing whom. One firmer anchor exists. Five of his engravings were in an album belonging to Hartmann Schedel, which was bound in December 1504.
He probably made some engravings before leaving Italy. His best, and perhaps all of them, were likely done after the move to Germany. A few paintings carry dates: 1500, 1503-1504 and 1508.
Maximilian's employment records suggest that Jacopo's duties were to include illuminating manuscripts. Yet no work in that medium is generally attributed to him. His only generally accepted drawing is a Cleopatra in the British Museum, evidently a study for an engraving that has not survived.
His engravings show a style related to Alvise Vivarini and Giovanni Bellini, but with a languorous quality all its own. The probably earlier prints, made around the turn of the century, use parallel hatching, showing the technical influence of Mantegna. Most of the engravings are small and show just a few figures. Truculent satyrs appear in several, and the mythological subjects include two Sacrifices to Priapus.
The earliest figures have "small heads and somewhat shapeless bodies, with sloping shoulders and thick torsos supported by slender legs". His paintings show the same traits. Several nudes probably come from a middle period, and the most famous are Apollo and Diana, St Sebastian and the Three Bound Captives. In them his ability to organize the whole composition has greatly improved.
In a final group the style turns more Italianate and the compositions grow more complex. These prints have an enigmatic, haunting atmosphere and a very refined technique. Levenson has proposed that they date from his years in the Netherlands and show the influence of the young Lucas van Leyden.
That proposal fits the geography. Venice and the Netherlands were both port cities booming with trade, so their economies were tied together, and their art was tied as well.
A partridge and a pair of gauntlets hang at the center of a still life in the Alte Pinakothek in Munich. It is often called the first small-scale trompe-l'oeil painting since antiquity. It may once have been the cover or the reverse of a portrait. A fragmentary panel by Vittorio Carpaccio, though, has a trompe-l'oeil letter-rack from about 1490 on its reverse.
Most of his paintings are portraits or half-length groups of religious figures. The National Gallery in London holds a Sparrowhawk, probably a fragment of a larger work. Berlin's Gemäldegalerie has a Portrait of a German Man and a religious subject. The Louvre has a religious group, and Philadelphia has a pair of figures.
The most famous of his paintings is also disputed. The Portrait of Fra Luca Pacioli hangs in the Museo di Capodimonte in Naples. It shows the Franciscan mathematician and perspective expert demonstrating geometry at a table. On the table lie his own Summa and a work by Euclid, and a student who is not clearly identified stands beside him. The signature reads "IACO. BAR VIGEN/NIS 1495".
A Christ Blessing at the Snite Museum of Art, at Notre Dame University in Indiana, is also attributed to him.
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Common questions
Who was Jacopo de' Barbari?
Jacopo de' Barbari was an Italian painter, printmaker and miniaturist with a highly individual style. Contemporaries, including Albrecht Dürer, described him as a Venetian, though his birthplace and birth date are unknown.
When did Jacopo de' Barbari move from Venice to Germany?
Jacopo de' Barbari left Venice for Germany in 1500. He worked for the Emperor Maximilian I in Nuremberg for about a year, then for Frederick the Wise of Saxony in 1503-5.
How many paintings and prints by Jacopo de' Barbari survive?
About twelve paintings by Jacopo de' Barbari survive. He also made twenty-nine engravings and three very large woodcuts, which were highly influential.
What is the Map of Venice by Jacopo de' Barbari?
The Map of Venice is a huge woodcut aerial view of the city, 1.345 by 2.818 metres and printed from six blocks. A privilege was granted to its publisher in 1500, recording that the work took three years.
What was the connection between Jacopo de' Barbari and Albrecht Dürer?
Jacopo de' Barbari met Albrecht Dürer in Germany, and they discussed human proportion. Dürer wrote that Jacopo did not want to show his principles clearly, and he later failed to obtain Jacopo's manuscript book on the subject from the Archduchess Margaret.
Why was Jacopo de' Barbari called Jacop Walch in Germany?
In Germany Jacopo de' Barbari was often called Jacop Walch. The name probably comes from Wälsch, a word meaning foreigner that was used especially for Italians.
All sources
11 references cited across the entry
- 2Early Italian Engravings from the National Gallery of Art; JA Levinson (ed); National Gallery of Art, 1973, LOC 7379624.
- 3Alte Pinakotek Munich; Summary Catalogue ―various authors, 1986, Edition Lipp,
- 4David Landau in Jane Martineau (ed), The Genius of Venice, 1500–1600, 1983, Royal Academy of Arts, London.
- 6Suzanne Boorsch in KL Spangeberg (ed), "Six Centuries of Master Prints", Cincinnati Art Museum, 1993, no, .
- 8Procession in St. Mark's SquareGentile Bellini — n/a