BELLINI. - A celebrated family of painters to whom is essentially owed the renewal of Venetian painting from the beginning of the 15th century to the early years of the 16th century. The founder of the family was Jacopone, born, it seems, in the early years of the 15th century, already mentioned as a painter in 1424 and a pupil of Gentile da Fabriano. Jacopo was a friend and father-in-law of Mantegna, to whom in 1453 he gave his daughter in marriage. He was still alive on 17 January 1470, but had already died by 23 November 1471. Most of his major works have been destroyed: among those that remain we recall the *Crucifix* in the civic museum of Verona, poorly preserved; the *Madonna and Child* in the gallery of the Accademia in Venice, still rigid and with Gothic reminiscences in the ornamentation; the *Madonna and Child* in the Tadini gallery in Lovere, inspired by Gentile da Fabriano; the *Madonna and Child* in the Uffizi, in which the hieratic solemnity is tempered by the human gesture of teaching the child the blessing; the *Madonna* from the church of Legnaro near Padua, now in the Accademia in Venice, in which an influence of his son Giovanni seems to be discernible. The *Little Madonna* in the Brera gallery is dated 1448.
The works preserved by themselves would not be sufficient to make us understand the art of Jacopo and its importance in the development of Venetian painting, if we did not know of his two sketchbooks, one in the British Museum in London and the other in the Louvre, perhaps prepared by him for his sons. These drawings reveal how Jacopo was truly the initiator of the new Venetian painting: we find in them studies of figures and movements, landscapes, and architectures partly drawn from life, in which the Gothic and the antique are blended. The artist knew especially how to render atmosphere, paving the way for one of the most notable achievements of great Venetian painting.
GENTILE, son of Jacopo, born in Venice, almost certainly in 1429, died there on 23 February 1507. He followed his father in art and was influenced by Mantegna, his brother-in-law, as is especially evident in the organ shutters now in the museum of the Opera of S. Marco. His first signed and dated work is the large tempera representing the Blessed Lorenzo Giustiniani, now in the Accademia in Venice (1465). The saint is depicted in profile with sharp outlines. This painting shows Mantegnesque reminiscences and those realistic tendencies that would assert themselves in portraits, in which the artist was highly skilled. Famous is the *Portrait of Mehmed II* (London gallery), which Gentile painted at the invitation of that sultan in 1479.
Dated 1496 is one of the three canvases executed for the confraternity of S. Giovanni Evangelista: the *Procession of the Relic of the Cross in Piazza S. Marco*. In this painting one sees Gentile’s skill as a *vedutista* of documentary exactitude: the square is scrupulously represented with all the details of its buildings, so much so that on the façade of S. Marco we can see all the original musicians in their places. Although the artist strives to render movement and to break the uniformity of the procession by varying the attitudes of the figures, as we see in the bearers of the baldachin, nonetheless his figures, some of them painted with portrait intent, remain awkward and uncertain in their movements. For the same confraternity Gentile painted in 1500 the *Discovery of the Relic in the Canal*, also interesting as a view, in which perspectival uncertainties and some archaic features in the figures persist. Of 1501 is the third canvas representing the *Miracle of the Liberation of Peter from Fever by Lodovico*. In the *Preaching of S. Mark* in the Brera gallery, the intervention of his brother Giovanni helps to confer movement and organic unity to the scene. Gentile marks a kind of transition between the florid Gothic and the Renaissance of Mantegna; he attempts to represent the crowd, but fails to interpret it as a unified whole because of his pedantic symmetry and the rigidity of his immobile rows of figures.
GIOVANNI (called Giambellino), brother of Gentile, born in Venice around 1429; first mentioned in 1459; died on 20 November 1516. The dates of his 15th-century works are uncertain. Already in his early paintings, which, like almost all the others, were of sacred subject, his predilection for pictorial effect is revealed (e.g., the *Madonna Holding the Sleeping Child* in the Accademia in Venice). In the second period of his activity he was sensitive to the influences of Mantegna, as is shown by some Madonnas and the *Transfiguration* in the Correr museum, in which the figures are crude and betray the effort to render relief, while the characteristic pictorial quality of Giambellino is seen only in the background. Similarly Mantegnesque is the *Agony in the Garden* in the London gallery, but the landscape has a broader expanse, the chiaroscuro is pictorial, and the lights are no longer harsh; the apostles, though presenting Mantegnesque foreshortenings, are more human, the landscape is airy, and the whole painting shows greater variety and fluidity. More closely adhering to religious inspiration than Mantegna, the artist appears to us in the *Pietà* in the Ducal Palace in Venice, rich in tragic feeling, set against a landscape background. The *Pietà* in the Poldi Pezzoli museum in Milan still retains traces of Mantegnesque squaring, but light and chiaroscuro soften the outlines; so too in the *Crucifixion* in the Correr museum, the originality of the luminous landscape and the diffused light make us forget the mannerisms not yet abandoned; in the *Pietà* of the same collection, the figure of Christ splendidly renders, without harshness, the abandonment of death. The *Pietà* in the Brera marks a further advance, also for the greater freedom of composition and a deeper expressiveness.
In the *Transfiguration* in the Neapolitan picture gallery, Mantegna is almost forgotten; the landscape predominates, and throughout the picture a luminosity is diffused that is intensified in the central figure of Christ. The *Madonna* in the Bergamo gallery already anticipates the type of his most celebrated Madonnas.
The series of large altarpieces begins with the *Pala of S. Giobbe*, now in the Venice gallery, in which the composition unfolds broadly and the sense of color is already almost tonal. The famous altarpiece in the sacristy of the Frari, signed and dated 1488, shows a further advance in the strength of its coloring. Traces of Mantegna are still noted in the *Pala of S. Zeno*, but the artist humanizes his divine figures ever more, so much so that the Virgin appears above all pervaded by maternal feeling. The colorism that would produce the great century of Venetian painting is here already fully formed: a warm light like old gold rises from the painted apse within which the Virgin stands out and allows the colors of the saints of coppery tone to emerge with even greater force.
The *Sacred Allegory* in the Uffizi is a mystical fantasy that in the landscape anticipates Titian and in the gradation of tones and the sweetness of the sfumato initiates tonal painting (v. Venezia, Arte di). The same softness of chromatic transitions, together with a uniformly fused coloring, is found in the *Madonna with Two Saints* in the Venice gallery; and it intensifies in the justly celebrated *Madonna of the Little Trees* of the same gallery, especially in the face of the Virgin, which almost loses the sharpness of its contours.
In the *Pala of S. Zaccaria*, signed and dated 1505, the painter returns to the style of that of S. Giobbe, but on the sides he represents stretches of sky and little trees. In the *S. Jerome with S. Augustine and Christopher* in the church of S. Giovanni Crisostomo in Venice, signed and dated 1513, Giambellino rivals Giorgione, so much so