Saint Jerome Reading

1501–1505

Isabella Gonzaga and commissions without paintings

In 1501–04 the Marchioness of Mantua, Isabella Gonzaga (also known as Isabella d'Este), has great difficulty obtaining from Bellini a painting of the Madonna and Saints, for which she has already paid in advance (it is now lost). In 1505 she tries through Pietro Bembo to commission another, of secular or mythological content; its subject and fate are unknown.

1506

Meeting Dürer in Venice

On Albrecht Dürer's second visit to Venice he calls Bellini very old but still the best in painting, and full of courtesy toward foreign fellow painters. In a letter to Pirckheimer Dürer reports that Bellini praised him before many gentlemen and came himself to ask for a work, promising to pay well.

1507

The death of his brother Gentile

After Gentile's death Giovanni inherits their father Jacopo's sketchbook, on condition that he finish a picture his brother left incomplete. Marin Sanudo notes that Gentile's brother Zuan Belin remains, the most excellent painter in Italy.