The Italian painter Giovanni Bellini (ca. 1435-1516) introduced the Renaissance style to his native Venice. His importance can scarcely be overemphasized in that he brought Venetian painting up to date and set it on the path that led to the art of Titian.

Giovanni Bellini was the youngest member of an important artistic family. His father, Jacopo, was a painter who had been apprenticed to Gentile da Fabriano, the leading Italian painter of the International Gothic style. Jacopo is best remembered today for his sketchbooks, which he passed on to his artist sons, Gentile and Giovanni. Niccolosa, Jacopo's daughter and eldest child, married Andrea Mantegna in 1453; this marriage brought into the Bellini family one of the most important painters in 15th-century Italy. Gentile, as eldest son, assumed direction of his father's studio and enjoyed widespread fame as one of Venice's leading painters. It was he, for instance, who...