Giovanni Bellini was the most important painter in Venice during the second half of the fifteenth century and the artist who almost single-handedly established the Venetian school as a rival to Florence and Rome. Born into an artistic dynasty — his father Jacopo and brother Gentile were both painters, and his brother-in-law was Andrea Mantegna — Giovanni absorbed influences from all directions but forged a style uniquely his own, characterized by luminous colour, atmospheric light, and a deep, contemplative mood.
His adoption of oil painting, learned partly from the example of Antonello da Messina (who brought Netherlandish techniques to Italy), allowed Bellini to achieve a richness of colour and subtlety of light effects that were impossible in tempera. His late altarpieces, especially the San Zaccaria Altarpiece (1505), bathe their figures in a warm, golden light that unifies architecture, landscape, and human form in a single harmonious vision — a development that directly anticipated the achievements of his two greatest pupils, Giorgione and Titian.
Bellini remained productive into extreme old age, continually renewing his style. Dürer, visiting Venice in 1506, declared him still the best painter in the city despite his advanced years. His legacy is the entire Venetian tradition of colour-based painting that runs from Titian through Veronese and Tintoretto to Tiepolo and beyond.