Bellini

   Family of Venetian artists whose works influenced the emergence of a distinctive Venetian Renaissance style of painting. Jacopo (ca. 1400-1470) studied with Gentile da Fabriano (ca. 1370-ca. 1427), a talented painter who worked in a late Gothic style. While much of Jacopo's work has perished, the surviving paintings show that he had retained the skills of his teacher in depicting color and light but had also mastered the theory and technique of linear perspective described in the treatise on painting by Leon Battista Alberti. Jacopo is best known for training his two sons, Gentile (ca. 1429-1507) and Giovanni (ca. 1431-1516). Gentile was knighted by the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick III (ruled 1440-1492) and was selected to restore the depiction of early Venetian history in the doge's palace and to paint an official portrait of each new doge (works which have perished). He also was sent to Istanbul in 1479 to paint for Sultan Muhammad II. His portrait of the sultan survives. Gentile produced many paintings of public processions in Venice. But the family's greatest painter was the younger brother, Giovanni, who adopted the Netherlandish practice of painting in oils and opened the way for the Venetian High Renaissance style of painting brought to completion by the greatest Venetian master, Titian, who was his pupil.