Giuseppe Bellesi

Italian, born 1873

Explore Selected Works

Canaletto, Ascension Day Festival at Venice, 1765/1766, pen and brown ink with gray wash over traces of graphite, tip of the brush with black wash, heightened with a few touches of white gouache (laid on thick eighteenth-century paper), Samuel H. Kress Collection, 1963.15.5

Ascension Day Festival at Venice

Canaletto · 1765/1766 · pen and brown ink with gray wash over traces of graphite, tip of the brush with black wash, heightened with a few touches of white gouache (laid on thick eighteenth-century paper) ·  Accession ID  1963.15.5

A man and woman sit above six winged angels in this vertical panel painting, which comes to a pointed arch at the top. They all have pale skin tinged with gray, rosy cheeks, blond hair, and gold halos. The woman, Mary, and man, Jesus, sit with their knees angled toward each other, and they fill the top two-thirds of the arch. The space behind them is hung with fabric that is ocean blue inside and brick red on the outside, and both sides are edged and patterned with gold. Mary and Jesus wear shell-pink robes trimmed with gold under very pale pink, almost white, mantles that drape from their heads to cover much of their bodies. The mantles are patterned with straw-yellow, delicate, leafy, geometric designs, and they are lined with moss green. Jesus wears a three-pointed gold crown and his hands are raised to place a similar crown on the woman’s head. Mary tilts her head to receive the crown with her wrists crossed over her chest. Their feet rest on a step leading down to the bottom quarter of the composition. The step has a white stone tread and is inset with green and pink stone within white molding on the riser. In front of the step, six angels are in two groups of three on a scarlet-red floor. The angels are about a quarter the height Mary and Jesus would be if they stood. The angels wear robes in shades of goldenrod yellow, fern green, azure blue, or pale pink, and their wings match their robes. One angel in each trio plays a lute-like wooden instrument. Most of the angels’ lips are parted but two look up at Mary and Jesus with lips closed.
Agnolo Gaddi, The Coronation of the Virgin with Six Angels, c. 1390, tempera on panel, Samuel H. Kress Collection, 1939.1.203

The Coronation of the Virgin with Six Angels

Agnolo Gaddi · c. 1390 · tempera on panel ·  Accession ID  1939.1.203

A woman and two small children, all with pale skin, sit on a rocky ledge in front of a hilly landscape in this vertical painting. The woman, to our right, holds one child on her lap and that child reaches to embrace the second child kneeling next to the woman, to our left. The woman, Mary, sits with her knees angled slightly to our right. She turns her face toward the child in her lap, to our left, but looks with shadowed eyes down in front of her. She has a long, delicate nose, rose-blushed cheeks, and her pale lips curl gently in a smile. Golden brown hair is parted down the middle over a high forehead, which is covered with a transparent veil that comes nearly to her faint eyebrows. A maroon-red hood covers her head and drapes across her shoulders under a slate-blue robe. Near one arm, the hem of the robe is turned back to reveal scarlet-red lining. She holds her left hand, to our right, slightly up with her palm facing us. Her other arm wraps around the nude child in her lap and rests against his hip. This child, Jesus, has a snub nose, rounded cheeks, and a pudgy body. He reaches to our left so his body is angled in that direction, but he turns his head back to look into the distance with pale brown eyes. To our left, the second child, Saint John, kneels and touches Jesus’s chest with one hand as he looks up and smiles at Mary. Saint John wears a ruby-red tunic tied at his right shoulder and a striped, wine-red sash around his waist is tied at his back. Both boys have reddish-blond curly hair, rosy cheeks, and are barefoot. Plants and flowers grow on the rocky ledge where they sit. To our left, beyond the trio, golden hills lead up to a ghostly gray castle on the highest peak. Closer to us but tiny in scale in the background, a person runs toward a man sitting on a rock and drinking out of a jug. A shallow waterfall emerges from the rocky base of the hill closest to us, just over John’s shoulder. The hills descend sharply to a river winding into the distance to our right, over Mary’s shoulder. Two white birds swim in the river near an arched bridge spanning the waterway. The river winds back to pale blue mountains along the horizon, which comes about two-thirds of the way up this painting. A few more people walk along paths and cross the bridge in the background. A few thin, white clouds float across the pale blue sky above.
Fernando Yáñez de la Almedina, Madonna and Child with the Infant Saint John, c. 1505, oil and tempera on panel, Samuel H. Kress Collection, 1939.1.305

Madonna and Child with the Infant Saint John

Fernando Yáñez de la Almedina · c. 1505 · oil and tempera on panel ·  Accession ID  1939.1.305