LA SAINTE FAMILLE

1475

Antonello da Messina in Venice

In 1475 Antonello da Messina arrives in Venice and meets Giovanni Bellini; Antonello's oil-painting methods are visible in many of Bellini's later works.

after 1479

Conservator of the paintings in the Great Council Hall

After 1479 much of Bellini's energy goes into his duties as conservator of the paintings in the great hall of the Doge's Palace: he restores his predecessors' works and paints new subjects on Venice's part in the wars of Frederick Barbarossa. His reward is first the reversion of a broker's place in the Fondaco dei Tedeschi and then, instead, a fixed annual pension of eighty ducats.

by 1485

Married to Ginevra

A record from 1485 attests that Giovanni Bellini is married to a woman named Ginevra.

1498

The death of his wife Ginevra

Judging by the will of Bellini's son, Ginevra died in 1498. The archives also hold the will of a certain Maria, who calls herself the widow of the painter Giovanni Bellini; some scholars conclude from it that he married a second time.

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.