Giovanni Bellini

Giovanni Bellini (Italian: [dʒoˈvanni belˈliːni]; Venetian: Zuane Belin ; c. 1430 – 29 December 1516) was an Italian Renaissance painter, probably the best known of the Bellini family of Venetian painters. He was raised in the household of Jacopo Bellini, formerly thought to have been his father, but now that familial generational relationship is questioned. An older brother or perhaps nephew, Gentile Bellini, was more highly regarded than Giovanni during his lifetime, but the reverse is true today. His brother-in-law was Andrea Mantegna.

Giovanni Bellini's use of clear, slow-drying oil paints had a great effect on the Venetian painting school, especially on his pupils Giorgione and Titian. The Bellini cocktail is named in his honour.

Giovanni Bellini was born in Venice. The painter Jacopo Bellini had long been considered Giovanni's father, but art historian Daniel Wallace Maze claims that Jacopo was his much elder half-brother, and that Gentile Bellini was his nephew rather than his brother. He lived and worked closely with his brother Gentile. His early paintings are all executed in the old tempera method.

His Dead Christ paintings (one of his most frequent themes, e.g. Dead Christ Supported by the Madonna and St. John, or Pietà) feature less harshness of contour and a broader treatment of forms and drapery. Giovanni's early work is often linked compositionally and stylistically to the work of Andrea Mantegna, his brother-in-law.

In 1470, Giovanni received his first commission to work with Gentile and other artists in the Scuola di San Marco, where, among other subjects, he painted a Deluge with Noah's Ark.

His Transfiguration is now in the Capodimonte Museum of Naples, was probably painted after 1470, exhibiting greater artistic mastery than his early work in Venice.

Also likely from this period is the altarpiece of the Coronation of the Virgin at Pesaro, which would seem to be his earliest effort in a form of art previously almost monopolised in Venice by the rival school of the Vivarini.

Many of Giovanni's public works are now lost. His altarpiece, painted in tempera for a chapel in the church of S. Giovanni e Paolo, was destroyed along with Titian's Peter Martyr and Tintoretto's Crucifixion in the fire of 1867.

After 1479–1480, much of Giovanni's time and energy were devoted to his duties as conservator of the paintings in the great hall of the Doge's Palace. The importance of this commission can be measured by the payment Giovanni received: he was awarded, first the reversion of a broker's place in the Fondaco dei Tedeschi, and afterwards, as a substitute, a fixed annual pension of eighty ducats. Besides repairing and renewing the works of his predecessors, he was commissioned to paint a number of new subjects, six or seven in all, in further illustration of the part played by Venice in the wars of Frederick Barbarossa and the pope. Executed with much interruption and delay, not a trace of these works survived the fire of 1577; neither have any other examples of his historical and processional compositions come down.

Of the other, the religious class of his work, including both altarpieces with many figures and simple Madonnas, a considerable number have been preserved. They show him gradually throwing off the last restraints of the Quattrocento manner; gradually acquiring greater use of the new oil medium introduced in Venice by Antonello da Messina about 1473, and mastering with its help all, or nearly all, the blending of colours and atmospheric gradation of tones. These works gradually became more restrained over time. The enthroned Virgin and Child (such as the one at left) become tranquil and commanding in their sweetness; the personages of the attendant saints gain in power, presence and individuality; groups of singing and viol-playing angels symbolise and complete the harmony of the scene. Venetian colour is used throughout the figures, architecture, landscape and sky.

In both the artistic and worldly sense, the career of Bellini was, on the whole, very prosperous. His long career began with Quattrocento styles, but matured into the progressive post-Giorgione Renaissance styles. He lived to see his own school far outshine that of his rivals, the Vivarini of Murano; he embodied, with growing and maturing power, all the devotional gravity and much also of the worldly splendour of the Venice of his time; and he saw his influence propagated by a host of pupils, two of whom at least, Giorgione and Titian, equalled or even surpassed their master. Bellini outlived Giorgione by five years; Titian, as we have seen, challenged him, claiming an equal place beside his teacher. Other pupils of the Bellini studio included Girolamo Galizzi da Santacroce, Vittore Belliniano, Rocco Marconi, Andrea Previtali and possibly Bernardino Licinio.

Bellini was essential to the development of the Italian Renaissance for his incorporation of aesthetics from Northern Europe. Significantly influenced by Antonello da Messina and contemporary trends such as oil painting, Bellini introduced the pala, or single-panel altarpieces, to Venetian society with his work Coronation of the Virgin. Certain details in this piece, such as breaks in the modelling of figures and shadows, imply that Bellini was still working to master the use of oil. This painting also differs from previous coronation scenes as it appears as a "window" to a natural scene, and excludes the typical accompanying paradise hosts. The simple scenery allows viewers to relate with more ease to the scene itself than before, reflecting Alberti's humanist and inventio concepts. He also used the disguised symbolism integral to the Northern Renaissance. Bellini was able to master the Antonello style of oil painting and surface texture and to use this skill to create a refined and distinctly Venetian approach to painting. He blends this new technique with Venetian and Byzantine traditions (previously influencing art in the city) of iconography and colour to create a spiritual theme not found in Antonello's pieces. The realism of oil painting coupled with the religious traditions of Venice were unique elements to Bellini's style, which set him apart as one of the most innovative painters in the Venetian Renaissance. As demonstrated in such works as St. Francis in Ecstasy (c. 1480) and the San Giobbe Altarpiece (c. 1478), Bellini makes use of religious symbolism through natural elements, such as grapevines and rocks. Yet his most important contribution to art lies in his experimentation with the use of colour and atmosphere in oil painting.

In 1822, German artist and composer Therese Emilie Henriette Winkel copied Bellini's work Christ Blessing for an altarpiece for the Brockwitz church in Dresden, Germany, which is still preserved today.

Spanish Museums own a scarce, but high-quality, presence of his works. The Prado Museum owns a Virgin and child between two Saints, with the collaboration of the workshop. The Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum preserves a Nunc Dimittis, and The Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando holds a Saviour.