Giovanni Bellini

About this book

Identified by Albrecht Dürer in the sixteenth century as Venice's foremost painter, and hailed in the nineteenth by Jacob Burckhardt as the 'savior' of Venetian painting, Giovanni Bellini is a pivotal figure in the development of Italian Renaissance art. In this lavishly illustrated book renowned art historian Oskar Bätschmann charts the fraught trajectory of Bellini's career, highlighting the crucial works that established his far-reaching influence in the Renaissance. Bellini struggle to break free from the long shadows cast both by his father, Jacopo, and by Bellini's brother-in-law, Andrea Mantegna, and Bätschmann traces out Bellini's development of distinct aesthetic and painting techniques that enabled him to set himself apart. Bellini also insisted on choosing his own subjects and themes regardless of the preferences of his patron Isabella d'Este, and he thus set new standards regarding the independent role of the artist. Anchoring Bätschmann's analysis are a wealth of reproductions that include such famous works as The Feast of the Gods, the various Virgin and Child compositions and Bellini's lauded altarpieces made for the churches of SS. Giovanni e Paolo, S. Giobbe and S. Zaccaria. Drawing on these masterpieces, Bätschmann argues that Bellini's artistry and skillful blending of colors created a new aesthetic more akin to music than to previous approaches to painting. And by leading viewers to understand this subtle, refined sensibility, Bellini made them into more knowledgeable admirers of art.