Giovanni Bellini
Italian, ca. 1431 – 1516
Person TypePerson
Terms
Japanese, Sōten School, act. 19th century
BiographyGiovanni was a leading master in 15th-century Venice. He expanded his workshop after ca. 1490, training and influencing his numerous shop-hands, imitators (generically known as Belliniani), and several major Venetian painters of the next generation. Giovanni absorbed a wide range of artistic influences, both from within the Venetian tradition and from outside. He inspired a technical revolution in the art of painting, gradually abandoning the traditional Italian medium, egg tempera, to instead use the technique of oil painting that had been pioneered in the Netherlands.