Giovanni Bellini An Introduction

An accessible guide to the foremost figure in Venetian Renaissance painting, tracing Bellini's personal artistic development within historical context Italian Renaissance artist Giovanni Bellini (c. 1435/40-1516) is considered the most important practitioner of Venetian painting in the latter half of the 15th century. Born into a family of painters, Bellini began studying art at a young age, painting primarily in the prevailing Gothic style of the early Renaissance. As time passed and he evolved as an artist, Bellini's wide-reaching influence came to inform the maniera modernainherited by Giorgione and Titian. His unparalleled ability to both harness the expressive power of light and recreate the poetry of natural landscapes became the foundational tenets of the Venetian school of painting for centuries to come. This volume provides an accessible guide to Bellini's work and the lasting influence of his career on Western European painting. Organized chronologically, the book maps the development of Bellini's own craft alongside the greater technical experimentation of the Quattrocento, detailing the artist's abandonment of traditional egg tempera technique for oil on canvas and taking into account the influence of contemporaries Andrea Mantegna and Antonello da Messina. Concise and up-to-date, this publication effectively conveys the magnitude of Bellini's contributions to Western European painting in the wider context of the era.

An innovative study of the relationship between Andrea Mantegna and Giovanni Bellini, two masters of the Italian Renaissance Andrea Mantegna (c. 1431-1506) and Giovanni Bellini (active c. 1459; died 1516) each produced groundbreaking paintings, marked by pictorial and technical innovations, that are among the masterpieces of the Italian Renaissance. Exploring the fruitful dynamic between Mantegna's inventive compositional approach and interest in classical antiquity and Bellini's passion for landscape painting, this fascinating volume examines how these two artists, who were also brothers-in-law, influenced and responded to each other's work. Full of new insights and captivating juxtapositions--including comparisons of each of the artist's depictions of the Agony in the Garden and the Presentation to the Temple--this study reveals that neither Mantegna's nor Bellini's achievements can be fully understood in isolation and that their continuous creative exchanges shaped the work of both. Published by National Gallery Company/Distributed by Yale University Press Exhibition Schedule: National Gallery, London (10/01/18-01/27/19) Gemäldegalerie, Berlin (03/01/19-06/30/19)

The Renaissance was a golden age in the long history of Venetian painting, and the art that came from Venice during that era includes some of the most visually exciting works in the whole of western art. This attractive book - a comprehensive account of painting in Venice from Bellini to Titian to Tintoretto - is an accessible introduction to the paintings of this period. Peter Humfrey surveys the development of a distinctly Venetian artistic tradition from the middle years of the fifteenth century to the end of the sixteenth century. He discusses the work of Jacopo and Giovanni Bellini, Giorgione, Titian, Veronese and Tintoretto as well as the paintings of those less well known - such as the three Vivarini, Cima, Carpaccio, Palma Vecchio, Lorenzo Lotto and Jacopo Bassano. Humfrey analyses these painters' works in terms of their pictorial style, technique, subject matter, patronage and function. He also sets the art against the background of the political, social and religious conditions of Renaissance Venice, as outlined in his Introduction. The book includes an appendix that provides brief biographies of thirty-six of the most important painters active in Renaissance Venice.

Praised by Albrecht Dürer as being “the best in painting,” Giovanni Bellini (ca. 1430– 1516) is unquestionably the supreme Venetian painter of the quattrocento and one of the greatest Italian artists of all time. His landscapes assume a prominence unseen in Western art since classical antiquity. Drawing from a selection of masterpieces that span Bellini's long and successful career, this exhibition catalogue focuses on the main function of landscape in his oeuvre: to enhance the meditational nature of paintings intended for the private devotion of intellectually sophisticated, elite patrons. The subtle doctrinal content of Bellini’s work—the isolated crucifix in a landscape, the “sacred conversation,” the image of Saint Jerome in the wilderness—is always infused with his instinct for natural representation, resulting in extremely personal interpretations of religious subjects immersed in landscapes where the real and the symbolic are inextricably intertwined. This volume includes a biography of the artist, essays by leading authorities in the field explicating the themes of the J. Paul Getty Museum’s exhibition, and detailed discussions and glorious reproductions of the twelve works in the show, including their history and provenance, function, iconography, chronology, and style.

This lavish examination of Giovanni Bellini's oeuvre offers a beautifully illustrated overview of the great Renaissance painter's entire career. Following the arc of Bellini's career, from his early devotional paintings to his later, occasionally secular works, this book offers an in-depth appreciation of the Venetian master who dominated the Early Renaissance. Featuring nearly every extant Bellini work, as well as those of his contemporaries, this book brims with gorgeous Renaissance art. Author Johannes Grave focuses on some of the artist's greatest works including Allegoria Sacra, the Brera Pietà, and the altarpiece of San Giobbe--to explore how Bellini excelled in tempera before mastering oil painting. Grave discusses how Bellini's precise lines, his delicate facial expressions, and the subtle effects of light and shadow were used in his religious paintings as well as his portraiture and late mythological depictions. This book examines Bellini's life, including his complex relationships with his father Jacopo, his brother Gentile, and his brother-in-law Andrea Mantegna. It considers the original contexts of Bellini's works, and elucidates the ways in which these paintings were meant to be perceived. The book also links Bellini's devotional paintings with the poetic creations of his pupil Giorgione. An important contribution to the scholarship of Renaissance art, this masterful book reaffirms Bellini's status as one of Venice's greatest painters.

Published in conjunction with an exhibition held at the Bode-Museum, Berlin, Aug. 25-Nov. 20, 2011, and at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Dec. 21, 2011-Mar. 18, 2012.

Leven en werk van de Italiaanse Venetiaanse schilder (1430-1516)

Giovanni Bellini was the leading artist of the early Renaissance in Venice and the master of what was probably the largest workshop of any painter in Italy. Many of the works that are today associated with Bellini are half-length images of the Virgin and Child, a type of painting that became the mainstay of his workshop's production, where they were created and replicated in great numbers to meet the needs of private devotion. The local market was large and its demands were varied in terms of both style and quality, and the Bellini workshop accommodated these demands through standardized methods of production. The essays included in this book examine the practice of workshop replication both to understand the specific working methods of Bellini's shop and to situate artistic practice within the broader context of the demand for particular kinds of images. Ronda Kasl is curator of painting and sculpture before 1800 at the Indianapolis Museum of Art. Other contributors include Keith Christiansen, Antonietta Gallone, Andrea Golden, Cinzia Maria Mancuso, and David Miller.