ABSTRACT
In the Renaissance, art was a profession, an enterprise practiced in workshops frequently composed of artists related to one another. Often the business was handed down from father to son. Giovanni Bellini was the son of a painter, the brother of another painter, and the brother-in-law of yet another painter. The style of Jacopo Bellini, known from the admittedly small evidence of a handful of authentic panel paintings and several drawing or pattern books, reveals the grafting of motifs and spatial conventions from mainland Italy onto a Venetian style. His most revealing works are the large drawings bound in two volumes now in London and Paris. Many of the sacred subjects in Jacopo's sketchbooks are woven into fantastic architectural frameworks daunting in their enormousness and complexity. Andrea Mantegna, who married Jacopo's daughter Nicolosa probably in 1454, was born in Padua and studied there with a local master.
