This beautiful and comprehensive survey, incorporating paintings, drawings and prints, is the first dedicated to two of the greatest Renaissance artists, who also happened to be brothers-in-law. In the early 1450s the ambitious young painter Andrea Mantegna, active in Padua, married into the Bellini family, an artistic dynasty in nearby Venice. Mantegna’s brilliant compositional innovations and his deep interest in classical antiquity particularly influenced his talented brother-in-law, Giovanni Bellini. Where Mantegna led, Bellini followed. Yet, in time, Bellini’s very different pictorial style – particularly his passion for landscape painting – in turn had a deep effect on Mantegna’s work. Working in very different environments, each had his own distinctive style, but neither artist’s achievements can be fully understood in isolation. In some form, the ‘other’ artist was never absent from the mind of either, and their continuing creative exchange shaped the work of both.

Accompanies the exhibition at the National Gallery, London 1 October 2018 – 27 January 2019 and Gemäldegalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin 1 March – 30 June 2019.