Giovanni BELLINI - Naked woman in the mirror (1515)

 

Naked woman in the mirror

1515
Oil on the table (62x79 cm)
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

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The signature of this work can be easy to recognize; in fact, the background and the idealized features are reminiscent of Bellini's most famous religious paintings. In this work the painter moves away from religious devotional ideals and dedicates himself to the profane ideal of female beauty.

Not only was Giovanni the best known and most important painter of the family but he was also one of the first to use oil painting and his art contributed to making Venice one of the most important cultural centers of the Renaissance.

The strongest influence he received was from Andrea Mantegna, who was his brother-in-law; subsequently his pictorial style moved away from its origins and became much more romantic and imaginative.

Bellini's pictorial activity led him to open a shop, in which Giorgione and Tiziano were also trained. Since at the time the custom was for the workshop master to sign all the works that came out of his school, at the beginning it was very difficult to distinguish the hand of the three masters among the most important in Northern Italy (Bellini, Tiziano and Giorgione), a difference that was accentuated with the maturation of their art.

Comparing artists: Gentile Bellini, Giorgione, Ingres, Mantegna, Tiziano