David Alan Brown

Giovanni Bellini (d. 1516) boasts a long career that left an indelible mark on Venetian painting. Vasari and other early writers failed to distinguish Bellini's late works from the rest of his output. Focused on Titian as the quintessential "old age" artist, subsequent writers have also paid little attention to Bellini's late work as a separate phase of his career. Bellini did not choose the subjects of his last pictures, which were stipulated by his patrons, but instead relied more and more on assistants; his decision to undertake and personally conceive and execute them points to a special commitment on his part to their creation. The Feast of the Gods (National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC), dated 1514, and other works that follow it, display a much expanded range of subject matter and a new degree of inventiveness. New technical investigations have played a key role in grasping the novelty of Bellini's last works. The artist's great mythological canvas in Washington, in particular, has been the subject of a recent scientific investigation using the latest multi-spectral scanning technology. This study, undertaken by the scientific lab at the National Gallery of Art, marks a major advance in the technical analysis of works of art.

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