Giovanni Bellini

Though not much is known about his family life, it is believed that he married a woman whose name was Ginevra and the couple had a son, Alvise.

On November 26, 1516, he died and was buried in the ‘Basilica di San Giovanni e Paolo’.

He was born sometime in c. 1430 in Venice as the son of a prominent painter Jacopo Bellini, who was one of the founders of Renaissance style of painting in Venice and northern Italy. Jacopo was a student of Gentile da Fabriano.

His initial exposure to art came from his father who familiarised him with the conceptions of Tuscany that included panoramic experiments and spatial mirage. His father strived to make him and his elder brother Gentile distinguished artists and gave them high-quality training in that pursuit while the boys assisted Jacopo in his workshop. Many of his initial paintings bear influence of Gothic style applied by his father as also the severe and hard style of the ‘Paduan’ school. .

Andrea Mantegna, another great painter of the Renaissance was his father’s pupil and later became his brother-in-law after marrying his sister Nicosia in 1453. The unique sculptural technique of Andrea in painting figures and landscapes with bold outlines influenced Bellini’s early works which is evident from his work ‘Agony in the Garden’ (c. 1465).

While the artistic milieu prevailed in his house, he was a family-oriented person and a devoted Christian. It seemed that he expressed his devotion through his various painting as the first two decades of his career witnessed his penchant towards more conventional religious subjects.

Some of his noted paintings during this period are ‘St. Jerome in the Desert’ (c. 1455), ‘Crucifixion’ (c. 1455 – 1460), ‘The Blood of the Redeemer’ (c. 1460) and the number of ‘Pietàs’ and ‘Madonna’s of that time.

His early paintings that followed the old tempera method exhibited soft scenes dominated by fascinating and sensuous colour effects that marked the works with aesthetic elegance and intense devout feelings.

He got his first appointment in 1470 to work in the ‘Scuola di San Marco’ along with a number of artists including his brother Gentile. Among other subjects, he was asked to paint a Deluge with Noah's Ark. None of his works of this kind including the painting ‘Deluge with Noah’s Ark’ have survived.

His middle years were strikingly different from the early years with regard to painting procedure and subjects. While earlier he mostly stuck to religious subjects that were created in old tempera style, he later started using the newly introduced style of oil painting and extended his work to the cathedrals and palatial buildings of Venice.