Giovanni Bellini

The National Gallery of Art and its Sculpture Garden is a national art museum, located on the National Mall between 3rd and 9th Streets at Constitution Avenue NW, in Washington, DC. Open to the public, free of charge, the museum was established in 1937 for the people of the United States of America... by a joint resolution of the United States Congress, with funds for construction and a substantial art collection donated by Andrew W. Mellon. Additionally, the core collection has major works of art donated by Paul Mellon, Ailsa Mellon Bruce, Lessing J. Rosenwald, Samuel Henry Kress, Rush Harrison Kress, Peter Arrell Brown Widener, Joseph E. Widener and Chester Dale. The Gallery's collection of paintings, drawings, prints, photographs, sculpture, medals, and decorative arts traces the development of Western Art from the Middle Ages to the present, including the only painting by Leonardo da Vinci in the Americas and the largest mobile ever created by Alexander Calder. The Gallery's campus includes the original neoclassical West Building designed by John Russell Pope, which is linked underground to the modern East Building designed by I. M. Pei, and the 6.
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In the 15th century Venetian painting developed through influences from the Paduan School and Antonello da Messina, who introduced the oil painting technique of Early Netherlandish painting. It is typified by a warm colour scale and a picturesque use of colour. Among the leading early masters were... the Bellini and Vivarini families, followed by Giorgione and Titian, then Tintoretto and Veronese. In the 18th century Venetian painting had a final flowering in Tiepolo's decorative painting and Canaletto's and Guardi's panoramic views. But these are merely a few of the most outstanding in a great number of artists in the Venetian tradition, many originally from outside the Republic's territory. The extinction of the Republic by French Revolutionary armies in 1797 effectively brought the distinctive Venetian style to an end; it had at least arguably outlasted its rival Florence in that respect. A very different Cretan school of painting flourished in Crete during the island's rule by Venice from the 13th century to 1669.
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