The Feast of the Gods
| The Feast of the Gods | |
|---|---|
| Italian: Il festino degli dei | |
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| Artist | Giovanni Bellini and Titian |
| Year | 1514–1529 |
| Medium | Oil on canvas |
| Dimensions | 170 cm × 188 cm (67 in × 74 in) |
| Location | National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. |
The Feast of the Gods (Italian: Il festino degli dei) is an oil painting by the Italian Renaissance master Giovanni Bellini, with substantial additions to the landscape in stages by Dosso Dossi and Titian, who added all the landscape to the left and centre. It is one of the few mythological pictures by the Venetian artist. Completed in 1514, it was his last major work. It is now in the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C., which calls it "one of the greatest Renaissance paintings in the United States".
The painting is the first major depiction of the subject of the "Feast of the Gods" in Renaissance art, which was to remain in currency until the end of Northern Mannerism over a century later. It has several similarities to another, much less sophisticated, treatment of the 1490s by the Florentine artist Bartolomeo di Giovanni, now in the Louvre.
The painting is signed by an inscription on the fictive paper attached to the wooden tub at lower right: "joannes bellinus venus / p MDXIIIII" ("Giovanni Bellini of Venice, painted 1514"), and his payment that year is recorded. Based on a narrative by Ovid, it is the earliest of a cycle of paintings, all major works, on mythological subjects produced for Alfonso, I d'Este, the Duke of Ferrara, for his camerino d'alabastro ('chamber of alabaster') in the Castello Estense, Ferrara. The subjects had been chosen by 1511, by the Renaissance humanist Mario Equicola, then working for the Duke's sister Isabella d'Este, and instructions apparently including some sketches were sent to the artists. Later commissions were four large Titians (one now lost), and ten smaller works by Dosso Dossi, probably placed above them. The three surviving Titians painted for the room are Bacchus and Ariadne (National Gallery, London), The Bacchanal of the Andrians and The Worship of Venus (both Prado, Madrid).
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