Italian family of artists. Primarily painters, the Bellini were
arguably the most important of the many families that played so vital a
role in shaping the character of Venetian art. They were largely
responsible for introducing the Renaissance style into Venetian
painting, and, more effectively than the rival Vivarini family, they
continued to dominate painting in Venice throughout the second half of
the 15th century. The art of Jacopo Bellini, a slightly older
contemporary of Antonio Vivarini, is stylistically transitional. In his
earlier career it was still strongly reflective of the Late Gothic
manner of his master Gentile da Fabriano, but from c. 1440 it was
increasingly Renaissance in character. It is not easy to trace Jacopo’s
development, and accurately to assess his achievement, since only a
small fragment of his painted oeuvre now survives; but two large albums
of drawings (London, BM; Paris, Louvre) testify to his capacity for
inventiveness and to his involvement with artistic concerns
characteristic of the Renaissance.
Giovanni
Bellini
(b ?1431–6; d Venice, 29 Nov 1516).
Painter and draughtsman, son of Jacopo Bellini. Although the
professional needs of his family background may have encouraged him to
specialize at an early date in devotional painting, by the 1480s he had
become a leading master in all types of painting practised in
15th-century Venice. Later, towards the end of his long life, he added
the new genres of mythological painting and secular allegory to his
repertory of subject-matter. His increasing dominance of Venetian art
led to an enormous expansion of his workshop after c. 1490; and
this provided the training-ground not only for his numerous shop-hands
and imitators (generically known as Belliniani) but probably also for a
number of major Venetian painters of the next generation. Throughout his
career, Giovanni showed an extraordinary capacity for absorbing a wide
range of artistic influences, both from within Venetian tradition and
from outside. He also oversaw a technical revolution in the art of
painting, involving the gradual abandonment of the traditional Italian
use of egg tempera in favour of the technique of oil painting pioneered
in the Netherlands. It was thanks to Giovanni Bellini that the Venetian
school of painting was transformed during the later 15th century from
one mainly of local significance to one with an international
reputation. He thus set the stage for the triumphs of Venetian painting
in the 16th century and for the central contribution that Venice was to
make to the history of European art.
Madonna with Child
1450-55
Tempera on wood, 47 x 31,5 cm
Civico Museo Malaspina, Pavia
Dead Christ Supported by the Madonna and St
John (Pieta)
1455
Tempera on wood, 52 x 42 cm
Accademia Carrara, Bergamo
Crucifix
c. 1455
Tempera on wood, 54,5 x 30 cm
Museo Correr, Venice
Transfiguration of Christ
c. 1455
Tempera on panel, 143 x 68
Museo Correr, Venice
Agony in the Garden
c. 1459
Tempera on wood, 81 x 127 cm
National Gallery, London
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