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| Giovanni Bellini and Titian The Feast of the Gods 1514-1529 oil on canvas National Gallery of Art, Washington DC |
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| Giovanni Bellini and Titian The Feast of the Gods Satyr, Silenus, Young Bacchus 1514-1529 oil on canvas National Gallery of Art, Washington DC |
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| Giovanni Bellini and Titian The Feast of the Gods Silvanus, Mercury, Jupiter, Cybele 1514-1529 oil on canvas National Gallery of Art, Washington DC |
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| Giovanni Bellini and Titian The Feast of the Gods Pan, Neptune, Ceres, Apollo 1514-1529 oil on canvas National Gallery of Art, Washington DC |
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| Giovanni Bellini and Titian The Feast of the Gods Priapus, Lotis 1514-1529 oil on canvas National Gallery of Art, Washington DC |
Posthumous Collaboration
Commissioned by Alfonso d'Este, Duke of Ferrara, for a chamber in which he displayed a collection of alabaster statues, this picture could not be completed by Bellini. Possibly Dosso Dossi lent a hand, and some suggest Albrecht Dürer, but it was definitely Titian who transformed it. There is a copy of the unfinished work as it looked before the final intervention, showing the entire scene arranged before a screen of trees, with spaces or openings for light between the trunks, like those still to be seen at the right. Today, the left side is enhanced by a quasi-romantic landscape with a turbulent sky (which does not in the least menace the divine assembly) and huge Olympian crags atop which can be spied a palace. Still, the figures themselves assuredly issued from the hand of Bellini.
The Divine Assembly
In this evocation of pagan Antiquity we can identify the gods by their attributes in the same way as saints in altarpieces or the philosophers in Raphael's School of Athens. A serious issue for the Renaissance and Baroque periods was whether or not one could read Christian messages like underlayers beneath great classical works. Virgil, in particular, was thought to possess a "naturally Christian spirit" which had permitted Dante to use him as a guide through Hell and Purgatory.
The Olympian Chorus
The Feast of the Gods is a pagan image of paradise. Many of those pictured are characterized by their tendency to battle each other – notably in the generational conflict between Jupiter and his father Saturn – but who here succeed, despite all, in achieving a rapport among themselves and pleasure in feasting together.
The overturned cup in the central foreground demonstrates that the gods may well already have had too much to drink. They are human enough not to disdain welcoming actual humans at their banquets (several figures standing in the background). The gods, in fact, are shown to be more accessible than earthly kings who take refuge behind rituals of etiquette.
– translated and adapted from Le Musée imaginaire de Michel Butor: 105 œuvres décisives de la peinture occidentale (Paris: Flammarion, 2019)