Giovanni Bellini

[Regions of Italy]

"The most modern of the ancients and the most ancient of the moderns"

In Venice, most visitors concentrate on their three "T"s: Titian, Tintoretto and Tiepolo. But there is another great artist who is sometimes overlooked, even though he is officially considered the founder of the Venetian school of painting.

Partly because he lived so long (circa 1430-1516), Giovanni Bellini was in many ways the protagonist of a profound change in Venetian art. When he was born, the Republic was in the throes of grafting a late Gothic style onto the city's existing layer of Byzantine splendor. Giovanni spent his childhood working as an apprentice in the very successful workshop of his father Jacopo, during the years when the decoration of St. Mark's Basilica was in full swing.

Then, in 1453, his elder sister married Andrea Mantegna, one of the most advanced students of perspective in all of northern Italy. Giovanni was deeply impressed by his brother-in-law's evolutionary work, just as he was later amazed by the ability of Piero della Francesca and Antonello da Messina to place groups of people within complex three-dimensional settings, something that had been virtually unknown just a few years before.

Among Venetian artists, Bellini led the way in fostering the style of "tonalism," which gave less importance to design and graphics while highlighting the tones of light and color. By the time Titian was starting his career, the elderly Bellini was breaking new ground again by adding mythological and allegorical scenes to the religious ones that had dominated the art of the fifteenth century.

Official Painter of Venice for thirty years, Giovanni Bellini had an active career that spanned six decades and produced at least two hundred works of art, mostly on canvas. As you travel around the region of Veneto, stop in whenever you can to see the creations of the man whom Albrecht Dürer considered Venice's greatest painter. Here is a partial list of Bellini's works on display in Italy. Click on the pictures to see them enlarged.

• Venice
  • Correr Museum: This is a good place to begin your acquaintance with Bellini, as it shows his younger work, still strongly influenced by Gothic styles. Among the works are:
    
    

    Crucifixion

    Transfiguration

    Dead Christ Supported by Two Angels

    the Frizzoni Madonna

    (all completed between 1455 and 1460)
    
    
    
    

  • Accademia: the Madonna with Child Giving a Blessing was painted when Bellini was clearly still under the Byzantine influence

    
    
    the Pala di San Giobbe (1487) is a great masterpiece

    many more works include

    St. Sebastian Triptych

    Weeping Over Christ's Dead Body (1514)

    Madonna with Child and Two Saints

    Madonna with Red Cherubim

    Pietà

    Sacred Conversion

    Giovanelli Holy Conversation

    Annunciation

    three more triptychs

    the delightful Madonna of the Little Trees

    and five small allegories that are excellent examples of Bellini's later profane work

    
    

• Doge's Palace:

  the Pietà is the only work left of the many Bellini created as the city's official painter

  
  
  
  

• Frari:
  Virgin with Sts. Mark, Benedict, Nicholas and Peter

  Triptych (1488), still in its original wooden frame over the altar in the sacristy

  • San Zanipolo:

    Poliptych of S. Vincenzo Ferreri (1464-8). Note the difference between the fairly clumsy pediment, painted first, and the magnificent annunciation angel completed two years later

  • San Zaccaria:

    Holy Conversation (1505) is an early example of tonalism

  • San Giovanni Crisostomo:

    Three Saints (1513)

  • Madonna dell'Orta:

    Madonna with Child

  • San Francesco della Vigna:

    Madonna with Child

    Madonna with Four Saints and Donor

    
    

• Vicenza
  • Santa Corona:

    the Baptism of Christ (1502) is an excellent example of tonalism

    
    

• Bergamo
  
  
  • Accademia Carrara:

    Madonna with Child

    Madonna with Child

    
    

• Murano
  • San Pietro Martire:

    Pala Barbarigo (1484), which shows the Doge being presented to the Holy Virgin by Sts. Mark and Augustine, is a great example of using light to define spaces

    The Assumption (1513)

    
    

• Rovigo
  • Accademia dei Concordi:

    Madonna with Child and Christ Bearing the Cross

    
    

• Verona
  • Castelvecchio Museum:

    two Madonnas with Child

  
  
  
• Florence
  • Contini Bonacossi Collection:

    Madonna in Adoration of the Sleeping Child

[Regions of Italy]