Getty Museum
Standing man wearing a turban
Creator
Giovanni BelliniItalian Artist · 1431–1436
All works by this person →Writing from Italy in 1506, Albrecht Dürer observed that Giovanni Bellini was "very old, but still the best in painting." Giovanni created the soft, luminous art of saturated color that brought Venetian painting into the Renaissance and helped Venice rival Florence as the center of artistic production. His father Jacopo headed a successful workshop where Giovanni and his brother Gentile painted un
More on Getty ULAN- Date
- about 1485
- Medium
- Pen and brown ink
- Culture
- Italian
- Department
- Drawings
- Institution
- Getty Museum
The artist, probably Giovanni Bellini, relied on line to create gradations of light and shadow on this bearded man wearing a turban and holding a book. He unified the drawing with a wide range of hatching and cross-hatching, creating texture as well as tonal contrasts on his robe. Representations of Turks became more common in Venetian art of the late 1400s. During this time the Ottoman Empire began to spread westward from its center in ancient Anatolia, now modern Turkey, threatening the independence of Venice. Ottoman armies won important victories in southeastern Europe, and the second Venetian-Ottoman war began in the 1460s, following Venice's refusal to relinquish its forts on the Aegean coast. In 1479 Gentile Bellini traveled to the court of Constantinople as official artist; on his return in 1481, he introduced Venetians to eastern artistic influences.
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