- Italian Renaissance painter, best known from the Belini family. He is credited with revolutionising Venetian colourist painting. G. Belini's paintings and landscapes had a profound impact on the Venetian School of Art, especially on his pupils Giorgione (c.1477-1510) and Titian (c.1488-1576).
Giovanni Belini was born in Venice into a family of artists. The year of birth is usually given as around 1430. It is known that his brother Gentile was older and also born around 1430. The very late date of Belini's first painting suggests that he was born a little later, perhaps after 1435. Later on, Giovanni was not mentioned in the will of his father's wife, Anna Rinversi, which has led to the idea that he was an illegitimate son. His father, Jakop Belini, ran the family workshop, and his older brother, Gentile Belini, became a renowned painter. Giovanni began his education in his father's workshop with his brother, both of whom were his father's assistants. Andréa Mantegna, a near-peer Padua painter, married Giovanni's sister in 1453 and influenced Giovanni's early work. One of Giovanni Belini's first independent altarpieces, The Annunciation, executed around the early 1450s, shows strong manifestations of Andrea Mantegna's style, with a limited colour palette and the depiction of draperies as if they were made of metal (the painting was long attributed to Mantegna). Giovanni undoubtedly took over some of his father Jacopo's work. By the time he was almost 30, his work showed a deep religious feeling and human tragedy. Belini's paintings in his early years are in tempera (e.g. "St. Jerome").
The painting "Prayer on the Mount of Olives", created by Giovanni around 1460, shows the artist's emerging talent. The painting is juxtaposed with a slightly earlier Mantegna painting on the same subject, between which there are obvious similarities and obvious differences when comparing the styles of Belini and Mantegna. In Mantegna's painting, the lines are very precise and clear, the forms sculptural. Giovanni Belini has placed the characters in softer tones, giving a sense of atmosphere. It is possible to determine that the action of the painting takes place in the morning. The power of Mantegna's work comes from the dramatic depiction of the rocks and the figures of the characters.
Antonello da Messina, who visited Venice in 1475-76 and worked in oils, revolutionised Belini's work. His altarpiece for the church of San Cassiano shows traces of influence in Belini's later works. Although Belini had already worked in oil, it is believed that it was Antonello da Messina who showed Venetian painters its true potential. From around 1475, Giovanni Belini was an authoritative and renowned artist in Venice. He was regularly commissioned to paint altarpieces by the wealthy nobles and merchants of Venice, as well as by clients in the surrounding towns. These paintings were usually intended for private burial chapels in churches and depicted the Virgin and Child among the saints. These paintings shaped the Venice School of Art's depictions of sacred scenes. They placed considerably more emphasis on the depiction of human figures and the relationships between them, while the importance of the landscape declined. It is possible that Belini was influenced by artists working in central Italy at the time, particularly Piero della Francesca. The change in style is illustrated by the painting of the altarpiece of the Coronation of Mary in Pesaro, which Giovanni probably executed in Pesaro and may have travelled to Urbino or Rimini, where Piero's works were located. Belini may also have been influenced by Donatello's sculpture, of which there were examples in Padua. St. In the altarpiece of the Church of St Job, Belini completely abandoned the landscape, and the volumes of the figures are depicted only in light and shadows.
Other major works by Giovanni Belini include the Ecstasy of St Francis and the Sacred Allegory, both painted around 1475-85. "The Ecstasy of St Francis is supposed to depict the stigmatisation of the saint and a vision of Christ, but neither of these narrative elements is present. "The meaning and purpose of the 'Allegory of the Saint' is generally difficult to determine. This was very unusual in Italy at the time, where paintings were created with clearly identifiable motifs from Bible stories. Some of the saints of the Christian Church depicted in the painting are identified, but the relationships between them are unclear. The halo of holiness and devotion is given to the paintings by the illuminating effects of light.
In 1479 Giovanni Belini took over his brother's commission for artwork to finish the historical scenes in the Great Council Hall in Venice. That year and the next he devoted his time and energy to the project. This work, considered his finest, was destroyed by fire in 1577. The altarpiece "The Annunciation", created around 1478-79, is fundamentally different from the work of his younger days on the same subject. The figures in this work have acquired a monumental quality and are surrounded by subtle tones of light. The figures and the landscape are merged into a single space. In 1483, Belinis was appointed painter to the city, a post he held until his death. In 1505, Belini signed and dated the altarpiece of the church of St Zacharias in Venice, another work by the painter of a complex composition with many characters. Belini painted many small paintings of the Madonna and Child and pietas. Among the portraits, the portrait of the Doge of Venice, Leonardo Loredano, painted in 1505, stands out as a symbol of the power and authority of the rulers of the Venetian republic.
By 1510, the taste of the Venetian public had changed. Belini's pupils included Giorgione, Titian and Sebastiano del Piombo. Belini not only influenced them, but was himself influenced by the new generation of artists. Giovanni Belini began to paint secular themes from ancient mythology. In 1514, he began the "Feast of the Gods", commissioned by Alfonso d'Este, Duke of Ferrara. The painting was later completed by Titian. In 1515, the artist, who must have been about 80 years old at the time, painted his first depiction of a nude woman, Young Woman Adorning Herself in Front of a Mirror.
Belini died in Venice in 1516. His work influenced not only his pupils, but also other painters, including Vitor Carpaccio, Lorenzo Lotto and Fra Bartolomeo. The German painter Albrecht Dürer wrote of Belinis in 1506: "He is very old, but he is still the best painter of them all". Very little is known about the painter's family: his wife, Ginevra Bocchetta, and his son, Alvise, who was born between 1480 and 1490.
