Giovanni Bellini, Feast of the Gods, 1514/29, Camerino d’Alabastro, Palazzo Ducale, Ferrara

Arcadia an ancient district of the central Peloponnesus (peninsula in southern Greece). In the Renaissance, Arcadia referred to an idyllic place of rural peace and simplicity.

AROUND 1512, the Duke of Ferrara commissioned Giovanni Bellini to paint this masterpiece of the Italian Renaissance, which now hangs in the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. Dosso Dossi subsequently decorated a gallery for the Duke, and, in 1522, painted over half of Bellini's canvas. Seven years later, Titian repainted the Feast of the Gods again. What did the earlier versions look like? How much of each artist's work do we see today? What motivated these unprecedented changes?

Around 1520 in Venice, Bellini and Titian painted the Feast of the Gods, a bacchanal inspired by the writings of Ovid. Both technically and stylistically, it would have been impossible and unthinkable a century before.

---

Among the ruling families of these city-states there was unceasing conflict and intense rivalry—either by open warfare or, in times of peace, through economic and artistic competition to achieve the most brilliant court. It was this rivalry that drove Alfonso d'Este to commission the Feast of the Gods for his palace in Ferrara, some 100 miles southwest of Venice.

The d'Este family ruled the city-state of Ferrara throughout the Renaissance. When Alfonso d'Este (1486-1534) became the Duke of Ferrara in 1505, he was as ambitious as any Renaissance prince, achieving wealth and influence through alliances with France and Spain against the Pope. Alfonso married the controversial Lucrezia Borgia who was the daughter of the Pope and who was falsely accused of poisoning her previous husband and of incestuous relations with her father. Alfonso created at Ferrara a truly magnificent court, attracting there famous writers (Ariosto), poets (Petrarch) and painters (Bellini & Titian). For his palace at Ferrara, Alfonso commissioned art from the most gifted artists of the age, the jewel of his collection being a painting by Giovanni Bellini, the acknowledged leader of Venetian art. The Feast of the Gods was the last painting which Bellini was to complete before his death in 1516.

The Duke's art collection was to become famous and the Feast of the Gods was its centerpiece. The painting depicted a bacchanal described in the writings of Ovid, and the other paintings in the collection portrayed related mythological episodes. To create a grand theme and a unified design for the series, Isabella d'Este, Duchess of Mantua and Alfonso's sister, lent Alfonso the services of Mario Equicola, one of the most admired classical scholars of the Renaissance.

Alfonso's painting, The Feast of the Gods, has always been regarded as a masterpiece of the Italian Renaissance. Its impact is accentuated by its huge size. Measuring 6 ft. by 6 ft., it dominates today the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., as, indeed it must have dominated Alfonso's studiolo in Ferrara nearly five centuries ago.

The story shown in this picture would have been familiar to any educated person in 1500. (At that time, education emphasized an intimate knowledge of Latin and Greek literature.) This particular story is taken from Ovid. A painting, like a snapshot, captures a moment in time. However, centuries ago, in order to tell a story, a sequence of events was sometimes painted in the same picture. The Feast of the Gods shows a sexual assault about to occur and how it was averted.

In the forest, classical gods (Apollo, Jupiter, Neptune, etc.) dressed as Venetian gentlemen, are cavorting with satyrs and semi-clad nymphs. Bacchus is dispensing wine liberally from an enormous cask and everyone falls into a drunken stupor…except for Priapus who, raising the skirt of the beautiful nymph Lotis, is about to ravish her. At that point, Silenus' donkey brays, waking everyone up. The startled nymph will push Priapus away and he will be laughed at by all. The story had just and unjust consequences, not shown here. Priapus was rightly banished but Lotis was turned into a locust tree.

The first painting which Alfonso acquired for his studiolo was the Feast of the Gods, completed by Bellini in 1514. Bellini died in 1516. Later, after other commissions from Raphael and Fra Bartolomeo had failed to materialize because the painters had died, Alfonso turned to Titian to complete the project during the period 1518-1529, according to the design created by Mario Equicola in 1511. Titian contributed three of the five paintings needed to fill the studiolo and the fifth was painted by Ferrara's court painter, Dosso Dossi. As will be seen, Bellini's painting, the Feast of the Gods, was to be altered twice during that period—once by Dosso to modernize the design and later by Titian to harmonize the Dosso re-working with the other Titian paintings in the studiolo.