_Giovanni Bellini_ (Venetian: 1426-1516). Giovanni Bellini (often shortened into Giambellini)--the greatest of the fifteenth-century artists--"the mighty Venetian master who alone of all the painters of Italy united purity of religious aim with perfection of artistical power"[106]--belonged, it is interesting to note, to a thoroughly artistic family. His father, Jacopo, drawings by whom may be seen in the British Museum, was an artist of repute; his elder brother Gentile (see 1213) was another. The two brothers studied together in their father's school at Padua, and there they formed a friendship with Mantegna, who afterwards married their sister. Two pictures in our Gallery (Bellini's, 726; and Mantegna's, 1417) recall the days of their early association. By blood every inch an artist, so was Giovanni also in character. His life was one long devotion to his art. He lived to be ninety, and showed to the end increasing knowledge and power. Albert Dürer wrote in 1506, when the grand old man was eighty, that "though very old he was still the best painter in Venice."[107] This famous portrait must have been painted about the same time, for Leonardo Loredano only became Doge in 1501. About 1460, Bellini had settled in Venice, where he soon rivalled and eclipsed the established school of the Vivarini. In 1479, when his elder brother Gentile departed to Constantinople, Giovanni was appointed in his place to carry on the series of pictures for the Hall of the Great Council in the Ducal Palace. These works were destroyed by fire in 1577. The documents referring to them show the terms on which he worked. He was engaged at a fixed rate of salary to work "constantly and daily, so that said pictures may be completed as expeditiously as possible, with three assistants, also paid by the State, to render speedy and diligent assistance." One of these assistants was Carpaccio (see 750). Three years later he was appointed State painter to the Republic. His fame is sounded by Ariosto, who in "Orlando Furioso" ranks him with Leonardo. It may be gathered also from the number of great painters who attended his studio, including Giorgione and Titian. He was overwhelmed with work, and doubtless employed assistants to complete commissions from his design. Hence the confusion that exists in the matter of attribution among pictures of this school (see under 599). With Titian he was on terms of warm friendship, and his last work (a companion piece to Titian's "Bacchus and Ariadne," now in the Duke of Northumberland's Gallery at Alnwick) was left for Titian to finish. Bellini was buried in the Church of SS. Giovanni e Paolo, in the same tomb where Gentile had lain since 1507.