The Feast of the Gods - Giovanni Bellini and Titian (1514/1529)

Giovanni Bellini and Titian

Oil on canvas

National Gallery of Art

This magnificent Renaissance masterpiece depicts a lavish woodland banquet of Roman gods and goddesses based on Ovid's Fasti, featuring Jupiter, Neptune, Apollo, Bacchus, and Mercury feasting while the fertility god Priapus attempts to lift the dress of the sleeping nymph Lotis. Begun by Giovanni Bellini—the revolutionary Venetian master who transformed painting through his innovative use of light and rich oil glazes—the work was later enhanced by his famous pupil Titian, who added the dramatic mountainous landscape to harmonize it with his own bacchanals in the same room. Originally commissioned by Duke Alfonso d'Este for his private alabaster study in Ferrara, this sumptuous scene exemplifies the sensuous, coloristic style that defined Venetian Renaissance painting and would influence European art for centuries.