Giovanni Bellini

Giovanni Bellini (c. 1435–1516), born into a distinguished Venetian artistic family, left a remarkable artistic heritage in his own work and in his influence on other masters. His father Jacobo Bellini (1396-1470) taught not only Giovanni and his brother Gentile Bellini (1429-1507), but also Andrea Mantegna (1431-1506), who married their sister. Despite traveling little outside the Veneto, Giovanni absorbed the lessons of Northern Renaissance artists and other Italian painters and theorists, creating many works of peerless serenity and harmony in color, composition and the treatment of light. His students included some of the greatest painters of Renaissance Italy, including Titian (c. 1485-1576), Sebastiano del Piombo (c. 1485-1547) and the short-lived Giorgione (1478-1510). In the 1480s he began employing a large workshop of apprentices to leverage his consummate craftsmanship. This panel, immediately preceding the expansion of his practice, by contrast appears to be entirely from his own hand – indeed, Bellini’s fingerprints are still visible on portions of the painting he touched before the oil dried, as if to leave another signature.