An accessible guide to the foremost figure in Venetian Renaissance painting, tracing Bellini’s personal artistic development within historical context
Italian Renaissance artist Giovanni Bellini (c. 1435/40–1516) is considered the most important practitioner of Venetian painting in the latter half of the 15th century. Born into a family of painters, Bellini began studying art at a young age, painting primarily in the prevailing Gothic style of the early Renaissance. As time passed and he evolved as an artist, Bellini’s wide-reaching influence came to inform the maniera moderna inherited by Giorgione and Titian. His unparalleled ability to both harness the expressive power of light and recreate the poetry of natural landscapes became the foundational tenets of the Venetian school of painting for centuries to come.
This volume provides an accessible guide to Bellini’s work and the lasting influence of his career on Western European painting. Organized chronologically, the book maps the development of Bellini’s own craft alongside the greater technical experimentation of the Quattrocento, detailing the artist’s abandonment of traditional egg tempera technique for oil on canvas and taking into account the influence of contemporaries Andrea Mantegna and Antonello da Messina. Concise and up-to-date, this publication effectively conveys the magnitude of Bellini’s contributions to Western European painting in the wider context of the era.
Giovanni Bellini, Virgin and Child enthroned with Saints and Angels (San Giobbe altarpiece), c. 1480.
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Bellini was celebrated during his lifetime. Albrecht Dürer, no less, called him 'the best in painting.' For those unacquainted with his risqué biblical scenes and portraits, art historian Peter Humfrey offers a valuable introduction.
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Painted circa 1490, "Virgin and Child (Madonna dei Cherubini Rossi)" is reproduced from Giovanni Bellini: An Introduction, authored by noted scholar of Venetian Renaissance painting Peter Humfrey and published by Marsilio Editori. One of our Staff Pick Holiday Gift Books for Art Historians, this beautifully-illustrated, 288-page hardcover traces Bellini’s personal artistic development among a family of painters within the historical context of the Italian Renaissance and western European painting. "Bellini’s feeling for the expressive power of light and color, and for the poetry of landscape, established these as central characteristics of the Venetian school of painting for another three centuries," Humfrey writes. "His constantly evolving style was matched by constant technical innovation, and his gradual abandonment of the traditional pictorial technique of egg tempera on panel for oil on canvas was crucial for the history of all of western European painting. His compositions show an unerring sense of balance between form and interval, and between generalization and the most exquisite detail. At the same time, he communicates his predominantly religious subject matter with exceptional spiritual depth. Several of Bellini’s paintings count, in fact, among the greatest works in all of Christian art." continue to blog
Published by Marsilio Editori. Text by Peter Humfrey.
An accessible guide to the foremost figure in Venetian Renaissance painting, tracing Bellini’s personal artistic development within historical context
Italian Renaissance artist Giovanni Bellini (c. 1435/40–1516) is considered the most important practitioner of Venetian painting in the latter half of the 15th century. Born into a family of painters, Bellini began studying art at a young age, painting primarily in the prevailing Gothic style of the early Renaissance. As time passed and he evolved as an artist, Bellini’s wide-reaching influence came to inform the maniera moderna inherited by Giorgione and Titian. His unparalleled ability to both harness the expressive power of light and recreate the poetry of natural landscapes became the foundational tenets of the Venetian school of painting for centuries to come.
This volume provides an accessible guide to Bellini’s work and the lasting influence of his career on Western European painting. Organized chronologically, the book maps the development of Bellini’s own craft alongside the greater technical experimentation of the Quattrocento, detailing the artist’s abandonment of traditional egg tempera technique for oil on canvas and taking into account the influence of contemporaries Andrea Mantegna and Antonello da Messina. Concise and up-to-date, this publication effectively conveys the magnitude of Bellini’s contributions to Western European painting in the wider context of the era.
