Giovanni Bellini. La lentezza del genio

“One of Italy’s great poets”: this is how Roberto Longhi described Giovanni Bellini, the undisputed patriarch of modern Venetian and European painting. Too little is still known about his life and career; in fact, even his year of birth remains unknown, though his career likely began in the early 1450s and continued uninterrupted until his death in November 1516. The scarcity of definite dates and many other objective gaps, however, make Giovanni’s artistic journey elusive; it is, moreover, dotted with experimental works that are not always consistent with one another, the result of a slow and constant exploration that sometimes seems to take unexpected turns. For these reasons, reconstructing Bellini’s career—and in particular his early years—remains a complex and unresolved undertaking that continues to divide critics. This volume focuses precisely on the master’s first decades and attempts to shed new light on the times and the ways in which the brilliant Bellinian star rose and matured.