The art of Giovanni Bellini has been a passion for half a century…” Peter Humfrey accompanies us through the work of Italian Renaissance artist Giovanni Bellini, considered the most important practitioner of Venetian painting in the latter half of the fifteenth century.

Born into a family of painters, Bellini began studying art at a young age, painting primarily in the then dominant Gothic style of the early Renaissance. As time passed and he evolved as an artist, Bellini’s wide-reaching influence came to inform the maniera moderna, or modern manner, inherited by Giorgione and Titian. His unparalleled ability to both harness the expressive power of light and recreate the poetry of natural landscapes became the foundational tenets of the Venetian school of painting for centuries to come.

This volume provides an accessible guide to Bellini’s work and the lasting influence of his career on Western European painting. Organized chronologically, the book maps the development of Bellini’s own craft alongside the greater technical experimentation of the Quattrocento, detailing the artist’s rejection of traditional egg tempera technique for oil on canvas and taking into account the influence of contemporaries Andrea Mantegna and Antonello da Messina.

Concise and up to date, this book effectively conveys the scale of Bellini’s contributions to Western European painting in the wider context of the era.