Early Career
Giovanni Bellini was born in Venice. He was brought up in his father's house, and always lived and worked in the closest fraternal relation with his brother Gentile. Up until the age of nearly thirty we find in his work a depth of religious feeling and human pathos which is his own. His paintings from the early period are all executed in the old tempera method; the scene is softened by a new and beautiful effect of romantic sunrise color (see for example, the St. Jerome at left).
In a somewhat changed and more personal manner, with less harshness of contour and a broader treatment of forms and draperies, but not less force of religious feeling, are the Dead Christ pictures, in these days one of the master's most frequent themes, (see for example the Pietà: Dead Christ Supported by the Virgin and St. John at right). Giovanni's early works have often been linked both compositionally and stylistically to those of his brother-in-law, Andrea Mantegna (1431–1506).
In 1470 Giovanni received his first appointment to work along with his brother and other artists in the Scuola di San Marco, where among other subjects he was commissioned to paint a Deluge with Noah's Ark. None of the master's works of this kind, whether painted for the various schools or confraternities or for the ducal palace, have survived.
Read more about this topic: Giovanni Bellini
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or career:
“Quintilian [educational writer in Rome around A.D. 100] thought that the earliest years of the childs life were crucial. Education should start earlier than age seven, within the family. It should not be so hard as to give the child an aversion to learning. Rather, these early lessons would take the form of playthat embryonic notion of kindergarten.”
—C. John Sommerville (20th century)
“The problem, thus, is not whether or not women are to combine marriage and motherhood with work or career but how they are to do soconcomitantly in a two-role continuous pattern or sequentially in a pattern involving job or career discontinuities.”
—Jessie Bernard (20th century)