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Giovanni Bellini
Painter
Giovanni Bellini Pupil of his
father and first collaborated with him and
Gentile on the great decorative works for the
scuole (Gentile Bellini), now destroyed. Having no
interest in classical subjects, which were
becoming popular, he chose predominantly religious themes, which he treated with much of
the devotional restraint of earlier painters.
Nevertheless, by adopting the technique
of oil
glazing and gradually abandoning the linear
conception of form he revolutionized Venetian
painting and substantially affected the future
course of European painting through his most
famous pupils, Giorgione
and Titian. He was
slow to find his own style and never ceased to
develop it. In Padua (1458-60) he was strongly
influenced by Mantegna, though his work was
never as sculptural or severe as Mantegna's, e.g.
their respective treatments of The Agony in the
Garden, both based on a sketch by Jacopo Bellini. Bellini's
version has a naturalistic landscape background
(one of the earliest examples of landscape
painting); it illustrates his ability to create a
lyrical affinity between his figures and their settings. Other early works probably done at this
time include several madonnas
and pietas.
These
madonnas have the serenity, tenderness and
individuality typical of his later work; the
suffusion of light and the presentation of half-length figures are also characteristic of his style.
Bellini returned to Venice in 1460. 4 triptychs
(1460-1) for the Carita church were his
1st
major undertaking and these were followed by
the Altarpiece with St Vincent Fervor (1464), for the
church of SS Giovanni e Paolo, notable for the
differences in style between the panels. In 1470
he was working on the decoration of the Scuola
Grande di S. Marco with
Gentile
and visited
Rimini and Pesaro. There he saw oil paintings
by Rogier van der Weyden, which impressed
him by their realism and tonal variations. He
himself learnt the Flemish technique of oil
glazing from Antonella da Messina in 1475,
and
his Resurrection (1475/6) was the 1st Venetian
painting executed in glazes of pure oil paint. He
had been using a mixture of oil and tempera in
Rimini while the brushwork of the Pieta
with St
John is typical of that used with oil. His work
gradually lost its sharp contours, expressing form
by a developing richness and variety of tone and
colour, e.g. the altarpiece from S. Giobbe The
Virgin and Child with Saints and an Orchestra of
Angels. This style was more fully exploited by
Titian.
Much of
Bellini's time after 1497 was occupied in restoring the frescoes of the hall of the
great council in the Doge's Palace, Venice, a
work begun by Gentile. Among Bellini's portraits
is the famous Doge Leonardo Loredan (c. 1501).
He painted few mythological subjects, but the
best known, The Feast of the Gods (c. 1514),
painted for the camerino or study of Alfonso
d'Este of Ferrara, was unusual for its time in its
representation of deities as ordinary people
possibly members of the court of Ferrara. Titian,
who completed the decoration of the room,
repainted the landscape background of this
picture and made minor alterations to the
figures, though retaining Bellini's composition.
Source: The Thames and Hudson Dictionary of Art and Artists (World of Art)
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