Jacopo Bellini

Background

Jacopo Bellini was born in 1400 in Venice, Italy, into the family of the tin worker Nicolò Bellini.

Education

Jacopo was trained under the Umbrian artist Gentile da Fabriano, and in 1423 he had accompanied his master to Florence.

Career

Jacopo was mentioned for the first time in 1421, when he was already an established painter, the author of an altarpiece in the Scuola Grande di San Marco in Venice. In his signatures on two lost paintings - a "Saint Michael Archangel" in the church of San Michele in Padua (1430) and the "Crucifixion" fresco in the Verona cathedral (1436) - he called himself a disciple of Gentile da Fabriano, whose workshop he probably frequented during Gentile's stay in Venice from 1408 to 1414. The claim that he was in Florence as an apprentice in Gentile's shop was, however, without foundation.

Jacopo's earliest surviving works are probably the figures of saints in the Berlin Gemäldegalerie, recognized as his by Zeri. Datable to the end of 1420s, they show clearly the mark of Gentile's style. "The Virgin of Humility with Donor" in the Musée du Louvre; the "Madonna" in the Gallerie dell'Accademia in Venice; and the "Annunciation" in Sant'Alessandro in Brescia, completed with a predella in 1444, were probably painted in the early 1430s. These panels, which show his aspiration toward a late Gothic preciousness, also reveal his studies of perspective and investigation of naturalistic effects that run parallel with those of Pisanello. A more sober design, solid forms, and controlled rhythms characterize the "Madonna" in the Villa Cagnola at Gazzada, probably an effort of the later 1430s, as well as his works of the following decade, such as a "Madonna" in the Accademia in Venice and another dated 1448 in the Pinacoteca di Brera in Milan.

In 1441 Jacopo had the chance to measure his ability as a portrait painter against that of Pisanello; however, his likeness of Lionello d'Este has not survived. Toward mid-century Jacopo's art was stimulated by the presence in Padua of Donatello and the innovations of the young Mantegna, who was probably his collaborator on the mosaics begun by Michele Giambono in the Mascoli chapel in the basilica of San Marco in Venice, and who would marry Jacopo's daughter, Nicolosia, in 1453. Jacopo was able to evoke astonishing illusionistic effects with his use of perspective, which was empirically effective even if less correct in its construction than that described by Alberti and used by the Florentine painters. The masterpieces from this period are the two albums of drawings, one in the Louvre, the other in the British Museum. The frontispiece of the latter is dated 1430, which could refer to the execution of its earliest drawings. However, although scholars' opinions diverge on the subject, it seems that the two books include studies executed over a fairly long period, and that the drawings in the two albums, rather than being consecutive, overlap chronologically.

At the beginning of the 1450s Jacopo probably painted the polyptych now divided between Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York, and a private collection, and executed a lost processional banner for the Scuola di Santa Maria della Carità and paintings for San Pietro di Castello in Venice. The altarpiece for the Gattamelata chapel in the Basilica del Santo in Padua, which Jacopo signed along with his sons Gentile and Giovanni, was probably also from the same decade. Between the late 1450s and about 1465 we can confidently place the Madonnas in the Galleria degli Uffizi and the Accademia Tadini in Lovere, as well as the "Penitent Saint Jerome" and "Christ on the Cross", both in the Museo di Castelvecchio in Verona. Documents mention a series of lost canvases on biblical themes, painted in 1465 for the Scuola Grande di San Giovanni Evangelista and in 1466 for the Scuola di San Marco in Venice. In January 1479 Jacopo is recorded as still living, but by November of the following year he was dead.

Achievements

• In the phase of full maturity Jacopo is to be considered the most progressive Renaissance painter in Venice. Bellini is highly regarded as one of the founders of Northern Italian Renaissance painting, who, along with his sons, helped introduce the principles of Florentine Renaissance art to their native Venice. He is known chiefly through his two volumes of sketchbooks, which reveal both his interest in landscape and experimentation with linear perspective.

Works

More photos

• painting

  • Le triomphe de Bacchus

  • John the Evangelist, the Apostle Peter

  • Sketch of figures and scenes from the antique age

  • Triptych of St. Sebastian

  • St John the Baptist Preaching

  • Christ's Descent into Limbo

  • Triptych of the Nativity

  • Profile of a man

  • Madonna and Child

  • The Madonna of Humility adored by Leonello d'Este

  • Profile Portrait of a Boy

  • View of a fortification of Jerusalem

  • Annunciation

  • The Crucifixion

  • Sketch of young deer

  • NOT DETECTED

  • St Michael Defeating Satan

  • Lamentation

  • Crucifix

  • Nativity

  • The Beheading of John the Baptist

  • Virgin and Child

  • The Three Dead and Three Loud

  • Sketch of deer doe

  • Flagellation

  • Madonna and Child

  • Dormition of the Virgin

  • Triptych of St Lawrence

  • Christ in the grave

  • Virgin with Child

  • Presentation of the Virgin at the Temple

  • Triptych of the Virgin

  • NOT DETECTED

  • Saint Anthony Abbot and Saint Bernardino da Siena

  • Saint Jerome

  • Ross and rider

  • Tomb of a prince

  • The Twelve Apostles in a Barrel Vaulted Passage

  • Madonna and Child

Views

Jacopo long retained elements derived from Byzantine art, while he was interested in the higher decorative style in which he was trained, conventionally called International Gothic. Jacopo experimented with linear perspective and was among the first to make figures diminish in space using rules of perspective formerly applied only to depictions of architecture.

Interests

• Artists

  Brunelleschi, Donatello, and Masaccio

Connections

Jacopo's sons Gentile and Giovanni Bellini, and his son-in-law Andrea Mantegna, were also famous painters.

Father:

Nicolò Bellini

Son:

Gentile Bellini

Son:

Giovanni Bellini

painter

son-in-law:

Andrea Mantegna

painter

Daughter:

Nicolosia Bellini

References

• Jacopo Bellini: The Louvre Album of Drawings
  1984
• Giovanni Bellini: Landscapes of Faith in Renaissance Venice
  2017
• Genius of Jacopo Bellini
  1989
• 39 Color Paintings of Jacopo Bellini - Italian Early Renaissance Painter (1400 - 1470) - Kindle edition by Jacek Michalak, Jacopo Bellini. Arts & Photography Kindle eBooks @ Amazon.com.
  2012
• Myths of Venice: The Figuration of a State
  2001
• Die Skizzenbücher Jacopo Bellinis, Vol. 1: Mit Einleitung und Begleitendem Text (Classic Reprint) (German Edition)
  2017