Portal:Giovanni Bellini
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Introduction
Giovanni Bellini (Italian pronunciation: [dʒoˈvanni belˈliːni]; c. 1430 – 26 November 1516) was an Italian Renaissance painter, probably the best known of the Bellini family of Venetian painters. His father was Jacopo Bellini, his brother was Gentile Bellini (who was more highly regarded than Giovanni during his lifetime, although the reverse is true today), and his brother-in-law was Andrea Mantegna. He was considered to have revolutionized Venetian painting, moving it towards a more sensuous and colouristic style. Through the use of clear, slow-drying oil paints, Giovanni created deep, rich tints and detailed shadings. His sumptuous coloring and fluent, atmospheric landscapes had a great effect on the Venetian painting school, especially on his pupils Giorgione and Titian.
Selected general articles
The Frari Triptych or Pesaro Triptych is a 1488 oil on panel triptych painting by Giovanni Bellini. It is signed and dated 1488 on the centre of the Virgin Mary's throne, though it may have taken several years to produce, meaning he started it in 1485. On the reverse is a label dating its completion more precisely, to 15 February 1488. It is in the basilica di Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari in Venice.
Its central scene is the Madonna and Child enthroned with two angel musicians, flanked to the left by saint Nicholas of Bari and saint Peter and to the right by saint Mark (patron of Venice) and saint Benedict. The work's division into compartments is rather old-fashioned and may have been explicitly demanded by the commissioner, but Bellini uses this to his advantage, integrating the painted architecture with the frame, which he designed himself. This develops the illusionism of his San Giobbe Altarpiece, again placing the Virgin in a deep blue mantle on a high marble throne, using a golden light and a Byzanto-Venetian-style apse. To the sides thin strips of landscape suggest a vast space behind the work, whilst the trompe l'oeil apse behind the Virgin bears an inscription reading IANUA CERTA POLI DUC MENTEM DIRIGE VITAM: QUAE PERAGAM COMMISSA TUAE SINT OMNIA CURAE ("Certain gate of heaven, guide [my] mind, direct [my] life: may everything I do be entrusted to your care"). Read more...
Madonna del Prato (Madonna of the Meadow) is a 1505 painting of the Virgin Mary and the Christ Child by Giovanni Bellini, now in the National Gallery in London. Originally painted as oil and egg tempera on wood, it was transferred to canvas in 1949, with damage in places.
It presents a medieval iconography of the Virgin of humility seated before a full and shining rural panorama, with both the devotional aspect and the landscape aspect given equal prominence. Full of small details of everyday life, this landscape contributes to the intimate and familiar tone of the two figures. The vulture in the tree also possibly symbolises death. The figures' poses invite meditation on Jesus's death and passion, recalling Pietà compositions with the dead adult Jesus in his mother's lap. Read more...
The head of St. John the Baptist is a tondo painting by the Italian Renaissance master Giovanni Bellini. It is now housed in the Civic Museum of Pesaro.
The painting depicts the head of the St. John the Baptist just after his decapitation, with blood still dripping from the neck. The perspective from below show the influence of the treatises about perspective representation of the human figure which were being published at the time, such as Piero della Francesca's De prospectiva pingendi. Read more...
:Not to be confused with Pesaro Altarpiece (Titian) or the Pesaro Triptych.
The Pesaro Altarpiece (Italian: Pala di Pesaro) is an oil on panel painting by Giovanni Bellini, dated to some time between 1471 and 1483. It is considered as one of Bellini's first mature works, though there are doubts on its dating and on who commissioned it. The work's technique is not only an early use of oils but also of blue smalt, a by-product of the glass industry. It had already been used in the Low Countries in Bouts' 1455 The Entombment, but this marked smalt's first use in Italian art, twenty years before Leonardo da Vinci used it in Ludovico il Moro's apartments in Milan in 1492. Bellini also uses the more traditional lapis lazuli and azurite for other blues in the work.
It was in San Francesco church in Pesaro in Marche when that building was suppressed under the French occupation in 1797. It was transferred to the city council and after various issues it was entrusted to the city's museum, where it still hangs. Read more...
The Feast of the Gods (Italian: Il festino degli dei) is an oil painting by the Italian Renaissance master Giovanni Bellini, with substantial additions to the landscape in stages by Dosso Dossi and Titian, who added all the landscape to the left and centre. It is one of the few mythological pictures by the Venetian artist. Completed in 1514, it was his last major work. It is now in the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C., which calls it "one of the greatest Renaissance paintings in the United States".
The painting is the first major depiction of the subject of the "Feast of the Gods" in Renaissance art, which was to remain in currency until the end of Northern Mannerism over a century later. It has several similarities to another, much less sophisticated, treatment of the 1490s by the Florentine artist Bartolomeo di Giovanni, now in the Louvre. Read more...- The Four Allegories is a series of four small panel paintings in the Gallerie dell'Accademia, Venice, Italy by the Italian Renaissance master Giovanni Bellini, whose date has been variously argued as different points in the range 1490–1504. They all measure 34 (Perseverance) or 32 × 22 cm in size. Read more...
Saints Christopher, Jerome and Louis of Toulouse is a painting by the Italian Renaissance artist Giovanni Bellini, executed in 1513, and housed in the church of San Giovanni Crisostomo, Venice. Read more...- Virgin with the Standing Child, Embracing his Mother, also known as Willys Madonna is a painting by the Italian Renaissance master Giovanni Bellini (Venice, 1425/1433–1516). It is currently housed at the São Paulo Museum of Art in São Paulo, Brazil. Read more...
The Portrait of a Condottiere is an oil on panel painting by Italian Renaissance artist Giovanni Bellini, executed around 1495-1500. It is housed in the National Gallery of Art at Washington, DC, United States. Read more...
Virgin of Humility, adored by a prince of the House of Este, 1440. Notice the Pseudo-Kufic mantle hem. Louvre Museum.
Jacopo Bellini (c. 1400 – c. 1470) was one of the founders of the Renaissance style of painting in Venice and northern Italy. His sons Gentile and Giovanni Bellini, and his son-in-law Andrea Mantegna, were also famous painters.
Few of Bellini's paintings still exist, but his surviving sketch-books (one in the British Museum and one in the Louvre) show an interest in landscape and elaborate architectural design and are his most important legacy. His surviving works show how he accommodated linear perspective to the decorative patterns and rich colors of Venetian painting. Read more...
The Holy Allegory is a painting by the Italian Renaissance master Giovanni Bellini, dating from c. 1490 to 1500. It is in the Uffizi gallery in Florence, Italy. Read more...
The Portrait of Georg Fugger is a 1474 oil on panel Gothic-style portrait painting by Giovanni Bellini, now in the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena, United States. It is his earliest surviving portrait and one of the first works in oil (rather than tempera) by an Italian artist.
It can be securely dated due to an inscription on its reverse (removed during an early 20th century restoration) reading "Jeorg Fugger a di XX di Zugno MCCCCLXXIIII" ("Georg Fugger on 20th June 1474"). He was the head of the Nuremberg branch of the German Fugger bank, which was heavily involved in the Fondaco dei Tedeschi in Venice. He wears a garland and his individual features are shown in detail, although the work lacks the psychological elements introduced to Venice in 1475 by Antonello da Messina. A copy after the work is in a private collection in Milan. Read more...
Gentile Bellini (c. 1429 – 23 February 1507) was an Italian painter of the school of Venice. He came from Venice's leading family of painters, and at least in the early part of his career was more highly regarded than his younger brother Giovanni Bellini, the reverse of the case today. From 1474 he was the official portrait artist for the Doges of Venice, and as well as his portraits he painted a number of very large subjects with multitudes of figures, especially for the Scuole Grandi of Venice, wealthy confraternities that were very important in Venetian patrician social life.
In 1479 he was sent to Constantinople by the Venetian government when the Ottoman Sultan Mehmed II requested an artist; he returned the next year. Thereafter a number of his subjects were set in the East, and he is one of the founders of the Orientalist tradition in Western painting. His portrait of the Sultan was also copied in paintings and prints and became known all over Europe. Read more...
The San Giobbe Altarpiece (Italian: Pala di San Giobbe) is a c. 1487 oil painting by the Italian Renaissance master Giovanni Bellini, now in the Gallerie dell'Accademia in Venice. Read more...
The San Zaccaria Altarpiece (also called Madonna Enthroned with Child and Saints) is a painting by the Italian Renaissance painter Giovanni Bellini, executed in 1505 and located in the church of San Zaccaria, Venice. Read more...
Drunkenness of Noah is a painting by the Italian artist Giovanni Bellini. It was finished about 1515. It is kept in the Museum of Fine Arts and Archeology of Besançon, France. Read more...
The Madonna of the Small Trees (Italian: Madonna degli Alberetti) is an oil on panel painting by Italian Renaissance artist Giovanni Bellini, executed in 1487. It is housed in the Gallerie dell'Accademia in Venice.
Stylistic elements, such as the division of the background, suggest that the work was based on Bellini's Alzano Madonna in the "Accademia Carrara di Belle Arti di Bergamo". Read more...
The Madonna of the Red Cherubims is an oil on panel painting by Italian Renaissance artist Giovanni Bellini, executed around 1485.
Stylistic elements such as the child on one of the Virgin's knees, and the mutual glance, suggest that the work was based on Bellini's Alzano Madonna in the same museum. Read more...
:For the work of this title by Titian, see Lochis Madonna (Titian).
The Lochis Madonna is a c.1475 tempera on panel painting by Giovanni Bellini, now in the Accademia Carrara in Bergamo. It is signed IOANNES BELLINVS on a small scroll attached to the marble balustrade in the lower foreground. It dates from early in the painter's mature phase, although he was still influenced by Andrea Mantegna's sculptural approach to drapery in the painting. Read more...
St. Mark Preaching in Alexandria is an oil painting by Gentile and Giovanni Bellini, dated to 1504–07 and held in the Pinacoteca di Brera in Milan Read more...
Resurrection of Christ is a 1475-1479 painting by Giovanni Bellini. It was produced for the Marino Zorzi chapel in the mortuary church of San Michele di Murano in Venice. It has previously been attributed to Cima da Conegliano, Previtali, Bartolomeo Veneto and Marco Basaiti. It was acquired by the Gemäldegalerie, Berlin in 1903 and a full restoration shortly afterwards confirmed its attribution to Bellini. Read more...
Virgin in Glory with Saints is a 1510-1515 oil on panel painting by Giovanni Bellini and probably also his studio, now in the Gallerie dell'Accademia in Venice. It measures 3.5 m by 2.25 m and shows the Assumption of Mary, which is usually shown witnessed by the apostles - here it is instead seen by (from left to right) saint Mark, John the Evangelist, saint Luke, Francis of Assisi with the stigmata, Louis of Toulouse as a young bishop, Anthony the Great, Augustine of Hippo and John the Baptist.
It has similarities to Lorenzo Lotto's slightly earlier Asolo Altarpiece, showing the elderly Bellini still learning from younger artists. It was originally produced for the Santa Maria degli Angeli in Murano and was later transferred to the nearby San Pietro Martire and finally to its present home. Read more...
St. Jerome in the Desert is a 1505 oil on canvas painting by Giovanni Bellini, now in the National Gallery of Art in Washington. Little remains of the signature on the first rock in the left foreground, but it has been confirmed as genuine during restoration and can be reconstructed as "[Johannes Bellinu]s. 1505". This is problematic, since the work's general style is linked to fashions no later than 1490, whereas Bellini's style of figures and landscapes had already begun to be influenced by Giorgione by 1500, with the backgrounds more fused and unified in terms of atmosphere. The composition makes it more analogous to his earlier works, such as the c. 1480 St. Jerome in the Desert. The Washington work may have been a collaboration, a work completed by a pupil in Bellini's studio or left incomplete and only finished by Bellini himself much later.
Saint Jerome is shown reading in the desert, referring to his life as a hermit and as the producer of the Vulgate Bible. A lizard, a squirrel and hare appear among the rocks, whilst in the distance are a ruined Roman bridge and series of arches along with a walled city. In the centre background is another city on an island or peninsula in the sea. The fig tree, bare tree and crumbled rocks are all theological symbols. The upper left part of the ruins and other more stiffly-painted parts of the background were probably produced by Bellini's studio. Read more...
The Contarini Madonna (Italian: Madonna Contarini) is an oil painting by the Italian Renaissance master Giovanni Bellini, dating from c. 1475-1480 now in the Gallerie dell'Accademia in Venice. Read more...
Andrea Mantegna (Italian: [anˈdrɛːa manˈteɲɲa]; c. 1431 – September 13, 1506) was an Italian painter, a student of Roman archeology, and son-in-law of Jacopo Bellini. Like other artists of the time, Mantegna experimented with perspective, e.g. by lowering the horizon in order to create a sense of greater monumentality. His flinty, metallic landscapes and somewhat stony figures give evidence of a fundamentally sculptural approach to painting. He also led a workshop that was the leading producer of prints in Venice before 1500. Read more...
The Madonna with Child, or Alzano Madonna, is an oil on panel painting by Italian Renaissance artist Giovanni Bellini, executed around 1485. Read more...
The Presentation at the Temple is a painting of the Presentation of Jesus at the Temple by the Italian master Giovanni Bellini, dating to c. 1460. It is housed in the Fondazione Querini Stampalia, in Venice, Italy. Read more...
The Ecstasy of St. Francis (or St. Francis in the Desert) is a painting by Italian Renaissance master Giovanni Bellini, started in 1475 and completed around 1480. It is in the Frick Collection in New York City, displayed prominently in what was the living room of Henry Clay Frick, an American industrialist, financier, and art patron. The painting is oil on panel and shows the influence of Andrea Mantegna, who was the painter's brother-in-law. It is signed IOANNES BELLINVS on a small, creased tag visible in the lower left corner. The painting is now in the Frick Collection and it is considered to be one of its finest assets. Read more...
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Selected images
Madonna and Child, c. 1480; oil; Indianapolis Museum of Art
Christ Blessing, 1500; Tempera, oil, and gold on panel; Kimbell Art Museum, Texas.
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