By Anne Leader
Giovanni Bellini died on 26 November 1516 in Venice. Together with his brother Gentile and brother-in-law Andrea Mantegna, Giovanni dominated northern Italian painting at the turn of the sixteenth century. Trained by his father Jacopo, Giovanni is seen as a key figure in the development of Venetian painting because of his use of color and the impact he had on his students Giorgione and Titian. Giovanni painted numerous religious works, portraits, and mythologies, and he continued to innovate well into his 80s as seen in his Nude with a Mirror, painted not long before he died.
San Giobbe Altarpiece, c. 1487, oil on panel, Gallerie dell’Accademia, Venice.
St. Jerome Reading, 1505, oil on wood, National Gallery, Washington, Samuel H. Kress Collection, 1939.1.217.
Naked Young Woman in Front of the Mirror, 1515, oil on canvas, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna.
Feast of the Gods, 1514, oil on canvas, National Gallery of Art, Washington, Widener Collection, 1942.9.1, finished by Titian in 1529.
San Zaccaria Altarpiece, 1505, oil on wood, transferred to canvas — photographed by Thomas Struth, 1995. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Purchase, The Howard Gilman Foundation Gift, 1996 © Thomas Struth.