Giovanni’s earliest independent paintings were influenced by the late Gothic graceful style of his father, Jacopo, and by the severe manner of the Paduan school, and especially of his brother-in-law, Mantegna. What does it makes it beautiful to you? Giovanni Bellini, (born c. 1430, Venice [Italy]—died 1516, Venice), Italian painter who, in his work, reflected the increasing interest of the Venetian artistic milieu in the stylistic innovations and concerns of the Renaissance. Behind the saint recedes a fantasmagorical landscape with strange rock formations which would have made Chinese literati feel at home. It seems to have been during a voyage down the Adriatic coast, made probably not long afterward, that Bellini encountered the influence that must have helped him most toward his full development: that of Piero della Francesca. The same quality of idealism is to be found in his portraiture. If a sacristan is about, ask to see the bronze relief of the Deposition  with portraits of members of the Montefeltro family by the Sienese Francesco di Giorgio, located in the right apse. Photo: Mattia Balsamini. You see, as an art historian I usually feel an urge … But his sense of drama is his own. See more ideas about Bellini, Giovanni bellini, Giovanni. Photo: Mattia Balsamini. Tiepolo’s beautiful Madonna and Child with Saints Catherine, Rosa of Lima and Agnes, above the first altar on the right, is perhaps his happier statement as a religious painter. His early Madonnas, following in his father’s tradition, are mostly sweet in expression, but he substituted for a mainly decorative richness one drawn more from a sensuous observation of nature. Gentile's earliest signed work is The Blessed Lorenzo Giustinian (1445), one of the oldest surviving oil paintings in Venice (now at the Accademia Museum). For me the Triumph of Mordecai, which dominates the ceiling of the nave, is one of the most dramatic passages of painting of the Venetian Renaissance. Bellini also excelled as a painter of ideal scenes—i.e., scenes of primeval as opposed to individualized images. Giovanni’s earliest works date from before this period. The commission was intended to celebrate the relic of the Holy Cross which the confraternity had received in 1369. It is a painting about the triumph of loyalty and the public humiliation of evil. Director, National Gallery, London, 1946–67.

Nicholas Hall: This painting — housed in the Scuola di San Giorgio degli Schiavoni — and the extraordinary cycle around it painted by Vittore Carpaccio, was the work that first got me hooked on Italian art as a seven-year-old boy. FR: At Santa Maria dei Carmini, also known as Santa Maria del Carmelo, a supply of coins is necessary to illuminate Cima’s tender Nativity of c. 1509 and Lotto’s Saint Nicholas in Glory  with its irresistible landscapes. For altarpieces, the three dominant masters of the time were called in.