Giovanni Bellini so Sensuous

Giovanni Bellini is the best known painter from the Bellini family of painters. His early style can be described as Quattrocento, which incorporates classical art forms from Greek and Roman sculptors. His later works matured into a more progressive style and incorporated many instances of religious symbolism through natural elements. Our large set of Bellini patterns contains a wide cross section of his works. There are many versions of Madonna and Child, St. Jerome in the Desert, Pieta, Transfiguration of Christ, San Giobbe Altarpiece, Feast of the Gods, Le Christ Bénissant, Naked Young Woman in Front of the Mirror, Agony in the Garden, Madonna of the Trees, Madonna and Child, Dead Christ Supported by the Madonna and St. Paul, Dead Christ Supported by Two Angels, Madonna with Child Standing on a Parapet, Head of the Baptist, Madonna in Adoration of the Sleeping Child, Portrait of a Humanist, Dead Christ Supported by Two Angels, Saint Jerome in the Countryside, Portrait of a Young Man in Red, Madonna and Child with Two Saints, Sacred Conversation, Portrait of Doge Leonardo Loredan,, Head of the Redeemer, Portrait of Teodoro of Urbino and numerous portraits. There are also patterns of his Four Allegories (Lust, Falsehood, Fortune, and Prudence), two altarpieces (San Giobbe and San Zaccaria) and a self-portrait.

A Venetian painter who revolutionized Italian art by bringing the Renaissance style to his native Venice. His pioneering use of oil paints and deep, rich colors and shading greatly influenced his pupils Titian and Giorgione. Bellini was the trailblazer who positioned 16th century Venetian painting at the focal point of European art history.

Giovanni Bellini was born in Venice, Italy into a family of influential Early Renaissance painters. His father, Jacopo and his brothers Giovanni and Gentile were important Venetian artists. Jacopo Bellini was also art tutor to Andrea Mantegna. Little is known of Giovanni's early life but, with his brothers, he learned to paint and draw in his father's workshop. As the eldest brother, however, it was Gentile who took charge of their father's studio. Giovanni's early works reflect the influence of his father and brothers, but after the age of thirty, it is the art of Andrea Mantegna, who was also his brother-in-law, that had the greatest effect on his style.

In 1470 Giovanni and his brother Gentile received their first commission to paint a scene of the Deluge with Noah's Ark for the Scuola di San Marco. Giovanni was appointed the Doge's conservator of paintings for which he received an annual pension. Eventually, he was commissioned to paint a series of much admired historical scenes for the Doge's Palace, later destroyed in a fire in 1577.

The visit of Sicilian artist Antonello da Messina to Venice had a profoundly transformative effect on Giovanni Bellini's art and was to change the course of European art history. Antonello had learned the technique of painting in oils in Flanders, and while on a trip to Venice he was commissioned to produce an altarpiece for the church of San Cassiano. Upon seeing this technique, Giovanni abandoned egg tempera as a medium and adopted oils almost exclusively. The rich intensity, subtle tones and luminosity of oils transformed his art and paved the way for the art of the High Renaissance.

Two important works of the early 1480s, St. Francis in Ecstasy and the San Giobbe Altarpiece demonstrate Bellini's introduction of Northern Renaissance religious symbolism and landscape into Venetian religious works. The new medium of oil paints enabled him to experiment with rich color and atmosphere, paving the way for the art of the High Renaissance.

Bellini was an enormously prolific artist and produced hundreds of works, but only around 300 are still in existence. Most of his works are of religious subjects, including many Madonna and Child pictures, 50 of which have survived till today; however, he also accepted portrait commissions. Considered among his best is the fine Portrait of the Doge Leonardo Loredan.

By the 1490s Giovanni Bellini was a dominant figure of Venetian art and his workshop expanded greatly. He trained many apprentices, the most famous of which were Giorgione and Titian who would take Bellini's techniques and develop them into the art of the High Renaissance. By the early 1500s Bellini, now in his 70s, was so successful that he was unable to complete all the commissions he was asked to paint. Giovanni's brother Gentile died in 1507 and Giovanni finished his brother's painting, the Preaching of St. Mark in Alexandria as part of the conditions for inheriting their father's sketch books.

After Gentile's death, Giovanni was the sole master painter in charge of paintings in the Hall of the Great Council of Venice, a position greatly coveted by his onetime student and ambitious rival, Titian.

Towards the end of his life, Bellini experimented with mythological subjects. His last work, The Feast of the Gods, started in 1514, had been commissioned by the Duke of Ferrara but had to be completed by Titian due to Bellini's death in 1516 before the work was completed.

Giovanni Bellini was buried in the Basilica di San Giovanni e Paolo in Venice, the burial ground of the Doges and Venetian nobility.