St. Jerome in the Desert is universally recognised as Bellini's earliest surviving work, painted when he was around 16 years old. It depicts Saint Jerome seated on a rock in front of his cave in the Syrian Desert, with a book in his left hand – referring to his life as a hermit and as the producer of the Vulgate Bible – and his faithful lion in front of him. It hangs in the Barber Institute of Fine Art in Birmingham.
Agony in the Garden is in the National Gallery, London. It portrays Jesus kneeling on the Mount of Olives in prayer, with his disciples Peter, James and John sleeping near to him. In the background, Judas leads the Roman soldiers to capture Jesus.
The picture is closely related to the similar work by Bellini's brother–in–law, Andrea Mantegna, also in the National Gallery. It is likely that both derived from a drawing by Bellini's father, Jacopo.
Until the middle of the 19th century, Early Renaissance paintings were regarded as curiosities by most collectors. This one was bought by William Beckford at the Joshua Reynolds sale in 1795 for £5; it had probably belonged to Joseph Smith, the British Consul in Venice (d. 1770). It was then sold in 1823 with Fonthill Abbey (Beckford's country house in Wiltshire), and bought back by Beckford at the Fonthill Sale the next year (as a Mantegna) for £52.10s. In 1863 it was bought by the National Gallery for £630 – still a low price, even at the time.
The Coronation of the Virgin is considered as one of Bellini's first mature works, though there are doubts on its dating and who commissioned it. Its technique is not only an early use of oils, but also of blue smalt – a by–product of the glass industry.
It was painted as an altarpiece for the Church of San Francesco in Pesaro – a city on Italy's Adriatic coast, about 110 miles from Venice (as the crow flies) and some 20 miles from the Republic of San Marino. After the church was suppressed under the French occupation in 1797, the altarpiece was eventually entrusted to the city's art museum, where it still hangs.
The Feast of the Gods was Bellini's last major work, and one of the few that feature mythological subjects. Based on a narrative by Ovid, it's the first in a cycle of paintings on mythological subjects produced for Alfonso I d'Este, the Duke of Ferrara. The cycle includes four works by Titian, one of which is now lost, and ten smaller works by Dosso Dossi (court artist to the Duke). Both Titian (who was a disciple of Bellini's) and Dossi made alterations to Bellini's picture – adding details to the landscape – but the central figures remain the work of Bellini.
The Feast of the Gods was a popular subject in Renaissance art – throughout the 16th century and into the 17th – and Bellini's work is one of the earliest examples. It is now in the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC, which calls it "one of the greatest Renaissance paintings in the United States."
© Haydn Thompson 2020