Giovanni Bellini. The last works

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.