Italian High Renaissance Painter, ca.1430-1516 (b ?1431-6; d Venice, 29 Nov 1516). Painter and draughtsman, son of (1) Jacopo Bellini. Although the professional needs of his family background may have encouraged him to specialize at an early date in devotional painting, by the 1480s he had become a leading master in all types of painting practised in 15th-century Venice. Later, towards the end of his long life, he added the new genres of mythological painting and secular allegory to his repertory of subject-matter. His increasing dominance of Venetian art led to an enormous expansion of his workshop after c. 1490; and this provided the training-ground not only for his numerous shop-hands and imitators (generically known as Belliniani) but probably also for a number of major Venetian painters of the next generation. Throughout his career, Giovanni showed an extraordinary capacity for absorbing a wide range of artistic influences, both from within Venetian tradition and from outside. He also oversaw a technical revolution in the art of painting, involving the gradual abandonment of the traditional Italian use of egg tempera in favour of the technique of oil painting pioneered in the Netherlands. It was thanks to Giovanni Bellini that the Venetian school of painting was transformed during the later 15th century from one mainly of local significance to one with an international reputation. He thus set the stage for the triumphs of Venetian painting in the 16th century and for the central contribution that Venice was to make to the history of European art.  Related Paintings of Giovanni Bellini :. | Saint Zaccaria Altarpiece | Portrait of a Young Man | The Ship of Fools | Gods fest | Madonna of the Meadow |
Related Artists:
Anthony Frederick Augustus Sandys
1829-1904 English painter, illustrator and draughtsman. He was the son of Anthony Sands (1804-83), a minor local artist. He began his artistic education with his father and attended the Norwich School of Design from 1846. His precocious talent was recognized by the award of silver medals by the Society of Arts in 1846 and 1847. He moved to London in 1851, when he first exhibited at the Royal Academy, but he continued to spend time at Norwich until the death of his parents in 1883. After publishing in 1857 A Nightmare, a gentle caricature of John Ruskin and his Pre-Raphaelite prot?g?s William Holman Hunt, John Everett Millais and Dante Gabriel Rossetti and based on Millais's Sir Isumbras at the Ford (Port Sunlight, Lady Lever A.G.), he met Rossetti and became a member of his circle.
Archduke Rudolf of Austria
Rudolf Johannes Joseph Rainier von Habsburg-Lothringen, Archduke and Prince Imperial of Austria, Prince Royal of Hungary and Bohemia (8 January 1788 - 24 July 1831) was a Cardinal, an Archbishop of Olomouc, and a member of the House of Habsburg-Lorraine. Born in Pisa, Italy, he was the youngest son of Emperor Leopold II and Maria Louisa of Spain. He was elected archbishop of Olomouc in 1819 and became cardinal in the year 1820. In 1803 or 1804, Rudolf began taking lessons in piano and composition from Ludwig van Beethoven. The two became friends, and Rudolph became a supporter and patron of Beethoven; their meetings continued until 1824. Beethoven dedicated 14 compositions to Rudolph, including the Archduke Trio, the Hammerklavier Sonata, the Emperor Concerto and the Missa Solemnis. Rudolph, in turn, dedicated one of his own compositions to Beethoven. The letters Beethoven wrote to Rudolph are today kept at the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Vienna. On 24 March 1819 he was appointed, at the age of 31, Archbishop of Olomouc in the present day Czech Republic but then part of the Austrian Empire. He was made Cardinal-Priest of the titular church of S. Pietro in Montorio by Pope Pius VII on 4 June 1819. He was ordained a priest on 29 August 1819, and consecrated a bishop on 26 September. In 1823 - 24, he was one of the 50 composers who composed a variation on a waltz by Anton Diabelli for Vaterländischer Kenstlerverein. In Rudolf's case, the music was published anonymously, as by "S.R.D" (standing for Serenissimus Rudolfus Dux).
Bicci di Lorenzo
Italian, 1373-1452,was an Italian painter and sculptor, active in Florence. He was born in Florence in 1373, the son of the painter, Lorenzo di Bicci, whose workshop he joined. He married in 1418, and in 1424 was registered in the Guild of Painters at Florence. His son, Neri di Bicci was also a painter and took over the family workshop. Bicci di Lorenzo died in Florence in 1452 and was buried in Santa Maria del Carmine. Following early work - largely frescoes - in collaboration with his father, he received a number of important commissions, including, according to Vasari, from the Medici for a cycle of frescoes of Illustrious Men for the Palazzo Medici. For the Opera del Duomo, he painted frescoes of the apostles. And he painted a Saints Cosmas and Damian and frescoes representing the dedication of the church itself for Sant'Egidio in the hospital of Santa Maria Nuova. His best paintings are now thought to be the Madonna in Trono now in the National Gallery at Parma, the Three stories of St Nicholas triptych in the cathedral of Fiesole, and a Nativity in the church of San Giovannino dei Cavalieri in Florence.