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Italian Renaissance Learning Resources

In collaboration with the National Gallery of Art

Bellini, Jacopo

(b Venice, c. 1400; d Venice, between 26 Aug 1470 and 25 Nov 1471).

Painter and draughtsman. His surviving work consists of some 20 paintings—mostly small-scale, intimate devotional pictures—and nearly 300 drawings, contained in two volumes (Paris, Louvre; London, BM). The drawings constitute a unique oeuvre for a 15th-century artist, both in regard to their number and their nature; most of them are finished, independent compositions. Most of Jacopo’s large-scale picture cycles and important commissioned works have been destroyed. Known only through documentary evidence and contemporary sources, they are an indication of the high esteem in which he was held both in Venice and beyond.

Ursula Lehmann-Brockhaus