Page:Cyclopedia of painters and paintings - Volume I.djvu/173

 Venice about 1460, but no picture of his is known earlier than 1464, when he painted the doors of the great organ of San Marco. In 1465 he finished the apotheosis of Lorenzo Giustiniani, now in the lumber room of the Venice Academy. From this time his career is obscure until 1474, when he was appointed to restore the pictures in the Sala del Gran Consiglio, Venice. His works were highly praised by his contemporaries, and accepted as masterpieces by the government. In 1479 he was sent with two assistants, at the expense of the state, to Constantinople, where he painted the portrait of Mehemet II., now owned by Sir H. A. Layard. He also brought back a picture, now in the Louvre, representing the reception of a Venetian Embassy by the Grand Vizier. On his return to Venice he resumed his labours in the Council Hall, in conjunction with his brother Giovanni, and painted four great canvases in oil illustrative of the legend of Barbarossa, and other pictures of events connected with Venetian history, which were for the most part destroyed in the fire of 1577. But it was not until the close of the century that Gentile rose to a lofty position. His Miracle of the Cure was painted about 1494. He appears at his best in the Procession and Miracle of the Cross (1496 and 1500), Venice Academy, and in the Sermon of St. Mark, at Alexandria, Brera, Milan. The last picture, which was finished by Giovanni Bellini after his brother's death, is fine in composition and full of power, showing that he had considerably advanced beyond his father. Other works: Glorification of first Patriarch of Venice (1465), Academy, Venice; Portrait of a Doge, Museo Civico, ib.; do. of Caterina Cornaro, Pesth Museum; Madonna, Berlin Museum.—C. & C., N. Italy, i. 117; Ch. Blanc, École vénitienne; Vasari, ed. Mil., iii. 149, 175; Meyer, Künst. Lex., iii. 391; Lübke, Gesch. ital. Mal., i. 534; Zeitschr. f. b. K., xiii. 341.

BELLINI, GIOVANNI, born in Padua, or Venice, about 1428, died there, Nov. 29, 1516. Venetian school; younger brother of Gentile Bellini, and with him pupil and assistant of his father, Jacopo, in Padua. While there he was brought into contact with Mantegna, his future brother-in-law, then a pupil of Squarcione, and adopted many of his peculiarities, combining them with those of his father. This is shown in the Paduan character of his Christ's Agony in the Garden, National Gallery, London, a picture long ascribed to Mantegna. The same mingling of the Venetian and Paduan styles appears in his Pietà in the Lochis-Carrara Gallery, Bergamo, which is full of Mantegnesque grimness. His Pietà in the Brera, Milan, is less rigid. A third Pietà (1472) is in the Palazzo Ducale, Venice. About this time he produced his vast tempera of the Madonna with Saints, burned in S. Giovanni e Paolo, Venice, a noble work which proved that he was capable of grand composition and loftiness of style. In 1473 Antonello da Messina introduced at Venice the use of oil, and Giovanni, recognizing its advantages, laboured earnestly to enlarge the practice of the new medium. Constant improvement rewarded his efforts, until he at last painted his grand altarpiece, the Madonna with Saints, Venice Academy, which established his fame. After this he was chiefly employed until his death in painting in the Sala del Gran Consiglio in the Pa