Painted by Giovanni Bellini in 1514 for the studiolo of Alfonso I d'Este, Duke of Ferrara, 'The Feast of the Gods' is Bellini's last great work and a summit of Venetian oil painting. The Olympian gods gather in a woodland clearing — Bacchus and Silenus among them — for a banquet of wine and food in which desire and comedy mingle. Scientific analysis has confirmed that after Bellini's death the landscape backdrop was repainted and enlarged by his pupil Titian, producing the composition as it survives today.

Exhibition Venue

National Gallery of Art

Washington, D.C., United States