Giovanni Bellini

Giovanni Bellini (c. 1430–1516) transformed Venetian painting and taught the next generation's greatest masters. He was raised in the household of Jacopo Bellini, a respected painter who was formerly thought to be his father. His older brother Gentile was more famous during their lifetimes, though Giovanni's reputation now far exceeds his. His brother-in-law was Andrea Mantegna, whose early influence appears in Giovanni's sharply defined figures.

Bellini revolutionized color and light in Italian art. Moving from tempera to oil paints, he discovered how to build up rich, glowing tones through layers of transparent glazes. His Madonnas radiate a serene warmth that no previous painter had achieved. Atmospheric landscapes open behind his sacred figures, unified by soft, diffused light. In 1483 Venice appointed him its official painter, a position he held for the rest of his life. When Albrecht Dürer visited Venice in 1506, he wrote home: "Everyone tells me what an upright man he is, so that I am really fond of him. He is very old, and still he is the best painter of them all."

Bellini's workshop trained Giorgione and Titian, who would become the giants of sixteenth-century Venetian painting. His final work, The Feast of the Gods, was left unfinished at his death and completed by Titian. His celebrated St. Francis in the Desert hangs at the Frick Collection in New York. The National Gallery in London, Gallerie dell'Accademia in Venice, and Metropolitan Museum of Art all hold major works. He was buried in the Basilica dei Santi Giovanni e Paolo, the traditional resting place of Venetian doges.