The Feast of the Gods · Bibliography

Bibliography & Recommended Books

Sources for this exhibit on Giovanni Bellini’s Feast of the Gods (1514, retouched by Titian; National Gallery of Art, Washington) — the conservation study, the painting’s iconography, and the wider world of Bellini, Titian and Venetian Renaissance painting. Many of the original references are scholarly monographs; the affiliate links below point to in-print editions on Amazon. Purchases support WebExhibits.

Foundational — The Conservation Study

The single indispensable source for this exhibit. Bull and Plesters report the National Gallery of Art’s technical examination of the painting and reinterpret its complex history of overpainting by Dosso Dossi and Titian.

The Feast of the Gods: Conservation, Examination and Interpretation

David Bull & Joyce Plesters · 1990

The National Gallery of Art’s technical monograph on the painting, combining X-radiographs, infrared reflectograms, paint cross-sections and art-historical reading. Academic; the primary source for this exhibit.
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Conservation & Technical Examination of Paintings

Seeing Through Paintings: Physical Examination in Art Historical Studies

Andrea Kirsh & Rustin S. Levenson · 2000

The best general overview of how conservators read paintings — materials, techniques, X-rays, infrared, cross-sections — with twenty-five case studies from Giotto to Pollock. Suitable for general readers and students.
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Conservation of Paintings

David Bomford · 1997 (National Gallery Pocket Guide)

A short, illustrated introduction to what conservators actually do and why — structure, cleaning, retouching, the modern ethics of restoration. Ideal pocket primer.
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Bellini & Venetian Renaissance Painting

Giovanni Bellini

Rona Goffen · 1989

The standard English-language monograph on Bellini: lucid on the religious paintings and on Bellini’s late turn toward mythological subjects, the moment that produced the Feast. Scholarly but readable.
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Painting in Renaissance Venice

Peter Humfrey · 1995

A one-volume survey of fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Venetian painting, from the Bellini family to Tintoretto, with brief biographies of the major figures. The standard introduction.
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The Cambridge Companion to Giovanni Bellini

Peter Humfrey (ed.) · 2004

Twelve essays by leading specialists on Bellini’s career, workshop, patrons and posthumous reception. Academic; useful alongside Goffen for points of debate.
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Art and Life in Renaissance Venice

Patricia Fortini Brown · 1997

A richly illustrated social history of Venetian art: what was painted, for whom, and where it hung in the city — the civic, religious and domestic settings that shaped Bellini’s world. General-reader.
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Giorgione: The Painter of “Poetic Brevity”

Jaynie Anderson · 1997

A full study of the elusive Venetian whose example shaped both late Bellini and the young Titian, with a catalogue raisonné. Scholarly.
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Titian

Titian: His Life

Sheila Hale · 2012

The first full biography of Titian in more than a century — eight hundred pages of artist, patrons and politics across a sixty-year career. General-reader, but deeply researched.
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Titian

Charles Hope · 2003 (revised edition)

A revised edition of Hope’s 1980 monograph by the former director of the Warburg Institute — concise, technically attentive, often skeptical of received attributions. Academic.
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Titian’s Women

Rona Goffen · 1997

A close reading of Titian’s mythological and portrait paintings of women, including the Ferrara Bacchanals he painted alongside Bellini’s Feast. Scholarly.
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Tiziano

Miguel Falomir (ed.) · 2003 (Museo del Prado)

Catalogue of the Prado’s 2003 Titian exhibition: essays by leading scholars and full color plates of the Spanish Habsburg holdings. Academic; primarily in Spanish.
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Iconography — Ovid, Bacchanals & the Camerino d’Alabastro

Fasti

Ovid; tr. A. J. Boyle & R. D. Woodard · 2000 (Penguin Classics)

Ovid’s calendar-poem of Roman festivals — the literary source for the Feast of the Gods (the story of Priapus and Lotis, Fasti 1.391–440). Accessible modern translation with full notes.
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Pagan Mysteries in the Renaissance

Edgar Wind · 1968 (revised, Norton)

The classic Warburgian study of Renaissance mythological painting — the same Edgar Wind who wrote the foundational 1948 essay on Bellini’s Feast. Demanding but indispensable.
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Virtue and Magnificence: Art of the Italian Renaissance Courts

Alison Cole · 1995 (rev. ed.)

An accessible survey of the small ducal courts — Mantua, Ferrara, Urbino, Naples — that commissioned the most ambitious mythological paintings of the period, including Alfonso d’Este’s Camerino d’Alabastro at Ferrara. General-reader.
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Renaissance Materials & Technique

The Craftsman’s Handbook (Il Libro dell’Arte)

Cennino Cennini; tr. Daniel V. Thompson · Dover reprint of 1933 ed.

The fifteenth-century Florentine painter’s step-by-step manual: how to grind pigments, lay gesso, gild a panel, paint a fresco. The closest we can get to the workshop practice Bellini inherited. General-reader.
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Other References Cited in This Exhibit

Many additional sources cited in the exhibit’s text are out of print, were issued as conference proceedings, or were museum-only releases. They are listed below for the record.

Art in the Making: Impressionism, video, National Gallery, London, 1990.

Art in the Making: Italian Art before 1400, video, National Gallery, London, 1989.

Art in the Making: Rembrandt, video, National Gallery, London, 1988.

Biadene, Susanna, ed. Titian, Prince of Painters. Prestel, New York, 1990.

Bull, David. In Manca, Joseph, ed. Titian 500. Studies in the History of Art 45. Washington, D.C., pp. 367–373, 1993.

Cavalli-Bjorkman, Görel, ed. Bacchanals by Titian and Rubens. Nationalmuseum, Stockholm, 1987.

Coles, Alison. Virtue and Magnificence: Art of the Italian Renaissance Courts. Abrams, New York, 1995.

Feast of the Gods, compact disc, National Gallery of Art / Multimedia Corporation, 1996.

The Feast of the Gods, video, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1990.

Feller, Robert L., ed. Artists’ Pigments: A Handbook of their History and Characteristics, Vol. 1. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1986.

Gettens, Rutherford J., and Stout, George L. Painting Materials: A Short Encyclopedia. Dover edition, 1966.

Gibbons, Felton L. Dosso and Battista Dossi: Court Painters at Ferrara. Princeton University Press, 1968.

Goodgal, Dana. In Cavalli-Bjorkman, Görel, ed. Bacchanals by Titian and Rubens. Nationalmuseum, Stockholm, pp. 17–24, 1987.

Humfrey, Peter. “Two Moments in Dosso’s Career as a Landscape Painter.” In Dosso’s Fate: Painting and Court Culture in Renaissance Italy, ed. Luisa Ciammitti, Steven F. Ostrow, and Salvatore Settis. Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles, 1998.

Manca, Joseph, ed. Titian 500. Studies in the History of Art 45. Washington, D.C., 1993.

Mohen, Jean-Pierre. L’Art et la Science: L’esprit des chefs-d’œuvre. Découvertes Gallimard / Réunion des Musées Nationaux, Paris, 1996.

Physics and Fine Art, video, National Gallery / Institute of Physics, London, 1992.

Riley, Bridget. In Lamb, Trevor, and Bourriau, Janine, eds. Colour: Art & Science. Cambridge University Press, pp. 31–64, 1995.

Roy, Ashok, ed. Artists’ Pigments: A Handbook of their History and Characteristics, Vol. 2. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1993.

Smith, Ray. The Artist’s Handbook. Knopf, New York, 1993.

Vasari, Giorgio. Lives of the Painters, Sculptors and Architects. Everyman, New York, 1996. (English translation; original 1568, Le vite de’ più eccellenti pittori, scultori ed architettori.)

Walker, John. Bellini and Titian at Ferrara: A Study of Styles and Taste. Yale University Press, London, 1966.

Walmsley, Elizabeth; Metzger, Catherine; Delaney, John K.; and Fletcher, Colin. “Improved Visualization of Underdrawings with Solid-State Detectors Operating in the Infrared.” Studies in Conservation 39 (1994): 217–231.

West Fitzhugh, Elisabeth, ed. Artists’ Pigments: A Handbook of their History and Characteristics, Vol. 3. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1997.

Wind, Edgar. Bellini’s Feast of the Gods: A Study in Venetian Humanism. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1948.

Amazon links use the WebExhibits Associates tag webexhibits; purchases support the exhibit. Cover images for newly added titles are served from local files; the original Kirsh and Bomford covers retain their existing paths.