The Feast of the Gods

The gods and goddesses of Olympus gather for a rustic banquet at the edge of a dense wood, drinking, making music and dozing together in the golden afternoon — one of the supreme achievements of Venetian Renaissance painting. Giovanni Bellini designed the picture in 1514 for the duke of Ferrara, and some fifteen years later it passed under Titian’s hand, who repainted the landscape with richer greenery and raised the mountain that now rises behind the company. The collaboration has made the canvas a celebrated document of art history, x-radiographs revealing the stages of both masters’ work beneath the surface, and its mingling of pagan sensuality with the poetry of landscape places it among the treasures of the age. The painting is held in the National Gallery of Art, Washington.