Giovanni Bellini Paintings
1430 - 1516 Painter, Musician, Early Renaissance
Portrait of Fra Theodoro da Urbino, 1515
Tempera on panel, 24 3/4 x 19 3/8 inches (63 x 49.5 cm)
National Gallery, London Portraits
The personal components of Bellini's style, which became fundamental to the character of Venetian Renaissance painting as a whole, found expanded scope and an altered form in his painting of the 1470s. Flemish painting and, in 1475, Antonello da Messina's paintings, showed Bellini the possibilities of the oil medium, which he used from then on in place of tempera. Bellini's color took on added depth, and he explored the interactions of color, light, air, and substance still more fully. As a result, the distinction between solids and space became less clear; air began to mediate between them; contour lines gradually disappeared, to be replaced by transitions of light and shadow
