The "Man of Sorrows" of Giovanni Bellini: Sources and significance
It will be the purpose of this dissertation to outline some of the factors which brought the suffering Christ to such prominence in the late Middle Ages and Early Renaissance and which led to the enormous popularity of the "Man of Sorrows" in Northern Italy of the fifteenth century. In a more specific area, the thesis will try to account for the repeated occurrence of the subject in the work of Giovanni Bellini. The study will trace the image to its earliest depictions in the Byzantine Church and will survey the highly complicated problem of its transmission to the West and the multifarious and sometimes contradictory interpretations of the meanings it brought with it or acquired there. It will deal, moreover, with the artistic background, sources, and meaning of specific paintings of Bellini in order to demonstrate his unique shaping of the image. And finally, it will direct special consideration to those transformations of form and content which occur in the artist's overall development of the theme and to that powerful expression of compassion which elevates a number of those paintings to the highest levels of Christian expression
Downloadable Article, English, 1987