Giovanni Bellini - Venetian Painter

Enlarge Image When Albrecht Durer, the German Painter, visited Venice, he met Giovanni Bellini, the leading Venetian Painter. Bellini was then in his vigorous eighties, still painting magnificently and still open to learning new techniques and methods from younger painters. He was very kind to Durer - praising him 'highly before several nobles' and commissioning a painting from him, a gesture that no doubt helped the young Durer career-wise. Albrecht Durer wrote of this meeting - "...and they tell me he is a very honest man, so that I am most favorably disposed to him. Though very old he is still the best in painting here."

Early Life:

Giovanni was one of the most well-known artists of his time, widely honored and generally popular. In spite of that there is very little information available regarding his early life or even his later married life. We only know that his wife was called Ginerva and his son Alvise, nothing much beyond that. He was born around 1430 to Jacopo Bellini, who was a well-established Venetian painter.

There were two brothers, Giovanni and Gentile. Gentile, who also achieved renown as an artist, was perhaps the eldest and the legitimate one - after their father's death, he became the head of the Bellini clan and he is mentioned in the will of his mother Anna Rinversi of Pesaro. Giovanni, who finds no mention here, was perhaps the illegitimate son of Jacopo Bellini with one of his mistresses. Both Giovanni and Gentile trained, as was the custom then, in their father's art workshop and then entered the business under him.

Influences:

Venice was one of the greatest business centers in the world then and at the same time staunchly religious. It was inevitable that the young Giovanni Bellini grew up to be an extremely religious man, albeit not of the over-pious, intolerant variety - that would have been impossible given his own peaceable disposition and his constant mingling with the humanist thinkers and artists from Padua, a University Town that the Bellinis frequented for work purposes. It was in Padua that the Bellinis met Donatello and Andreas Mantegna, both of whom influenced their art.

Mantegna, who married Gentile and Giovanni's sister Niccolosia in 1453 or 1454, instructed Giovanni in using spatial perspective in his paintings and encouraged him to try his hand at the new emerging styles and techniques. He began using bright and luminous color schemes.

Another artist that majorly influenced Bellini was the Sicilian painter Antonello da Messina, who arrived on the Venetian scene much later in the 1470s. He was an oil painter of the realistic, Flemish school and Giovanni quickly picked up the techniques of using the new media from him and improved his own work.

Career:

In 1470 or 1471, shortly after finishing work on the High Altar of the Basilica del Santo in Padua, Jacopo Bellini died, leaving his sons his precious sketchbooks and a flourishing studio. Their brother-in-law Mantegna, who had lived in Padua for the past ten years, had moved on by this time to work in the court at Mantua.

In 1474, the Bellini Brothers received the important commission of restoring the large and deteriorating wall paintings in the Grand Hall of the palace of the Doge of Venice. It took them around 35 years to finish this project and, in the end, all their work was not to endure. The Great Hall was destroyed in a fire in 1577.

Around the time they were working on the Doge's Palace, Giovanni was invited by the Sultan of Constantinople to come and work in his court. However, as Gentile, the elder son, had succeeded their father as the official State painter of Venice, the officials of the Venetian Republic deemed that he go instead of Giovanni.

Giovanni stayed home and continued working on the Doge's Palace. Influenced by Antonello da Messina and responding to the social changes being wrought by the Renaissance, he also set up a new and successful venture as a painter of secular paintings and portraits. He also continued painting on his favorite religious themes. Three of his masterpieces 'St. Francis', the 'Transfiguration', the great 'San Gioble Altarpiece' were painted in this period. In 1483, he was made official painter of the Venetian Republic.

Giovanni and Isabelle d'Este:

In 1493, Giovanni accepted a commission to paint 'A View of Cairo' for Isabelle d'Este, the strong-minded wife of the Ruler of Mantua. Pleased with this work, she next asked him to paint a mythological piece for the Private Studio that she was decorating. Several other artists, including Mantegna, were also employed on this project.

Bellini seems to have developed a problem with Isabella's dictatorial attitude - he didn't like being told what to paint and especially not by someone who probably couldn't draw a line herself. However, in those times, it didn't help to be so blunt, so he made up various excuses - first that he could not compete with Mantegna's brilliant work and so wanted a change of subject, and then one thing after another until Isabella agreed to let him paint a religious painting of his own choice - Madonna and Child as usual.

For nearly two years, however, he neglected to put brush to canvas and then when at last he began work on the painting, he proceeded at his own leisurely pace. So much so that Isabella thought he was reneging on their agreement and took him to court to force him to deliver the work. However legal threats left Giovanni unruffled and the painting, commissioned in 1501, was delivered at his ease - in 1504.

It turned out to be worth the wait, however, and the delighted Isabella immediately gave him another commission - something of his own choice, she now suggested.

Last Years:

Giovanni Bellini continued painting and receiving work commissions well into his eighties. He also took in many young artists to apprentice under him in his workshop. Two of his pupils went on to be great artists in their own right - Giorgione and Titian - and quite transformed Venetian painting.

Giovanni, who never tired of learning and improving his work, kept abreast of new developments in the art field and didn't hesitate to pick up new techniques from his students. Some of his greatest works - 'The Madonna of the Meadow', 'Young Woman with Mirror' - were painted when he was in his eighties.

He however seems to have some problems with the very ambitious Titian. Titian, who also worked on decorations in the Doge's Palace, was not the sort to play second-fiddle to anyone. After first demanding the same privileges as were accorded to Bellini, he then convinced the Venetian officials that he was more competent and reliable than the notoriously procrastination prone Bellini. This was true and so in the end, the aged Bellini was replaced with the young and raring to go Titian.

Giovanni Bellini died in 1516, nearly a decade after the deaths of Mantegna (1506) and his brother Gentile (1507).