DAVID BROWN:
“The Feast of the Gods was completed by Giovanni Bellini, the dean of 15th-century Venetian painters, only two years before his death, when he was in his mid-eighties. On the wooden tub at the far right, you can see an illusionistic scrap of paper with his signature, and the date – 1514.”

“The subject is a bacchanal, really a kind of orgy. For Bellini, it was a radical departure from the madonnas, saints and portraits he had focused on throughout his long career. But risqué mythological themes had become very important to the younger generation of Renaissance painters, many of whom had been his pupils. When Bellini took up this subject, he was in effect becoming their rival.”

“Bellini chose to represent the bacchanal as a kind of picnic out in nature in which the Olympian gods drink and eat and nod off. They include Mercury lounging at the left with his helmet and staff, and just to the right, Jupiter, ruler of the gods. He’s identified by an imperial eagle. There are some mildly titillating moments – for example, in the lower right, the lustful Priapus slyly lifts the gown of the sleeping nymph Lotis.”

“But his attempt will be foiled by the braying of the ass at the far left – which will wake up the entire assembly. In a moment, Priapus will be ridiculed, and before he flees in embarrassment, he will demand the yearly sacrifice of an ass to make up for his humiliation.”

“The elderly Bellini may not have felt entirely comfortable with the erotic overtones of his subject matter. But the subject is almost secondary because he painted it in such a beautiful way. In fact, I’ve seen many visitors stop to admire the glorious symphony of pinks, whites, blues, and yellows, the lush landscape, and the ravishing still-life details here – such as the bowl of fruit at the feet of the gods, the various wreaths that crown their hair or, at the left, the wine pouring from a keg into a clear glass jug. People walk off in awe without paying attention to the meaning of the picture at all.”

“The landscape behind the figures was altered: in Bellini’s original work, the trees over on the right extended all the way across the canvas. Years later, his brilliant pupil Titian replaced many of them with the craggy mountain that now looms at the left, perhaps to suit other pictures hanging nearby, three of which he painted himself. So this masterpiece is really a dual effort: a figure painting by Bellini, and a landscape largely by Titian.”