The Feast of the Gods

The Feast of the Gods, painted in 1514 and held at the National Gallery of Art, was originally begun by Giovanni Bellini for Alfonso I d’Este’s camerino in Ferrara. Titian later modified the landscape background to harmonize with his own Bacchanal paintings that hung alongside it. The painting depicts the Olympian gods at a rustic feast, with Bacchus, Jupiter, Neptune, and other deities enjoying food and drink in a woodland setting. The collaboration between Bellini and Titian on this single canvas creates a unique document of the transition from one generation of Venetian painting to the next, preserved in one of the National Gallery of Art’s most treasured holdings.

X-ray analysis reveals Bellini's original landscape beneath Titian's more dramatic revision, while the figures retain Bellini's precise, classical handling with rich, saturated drapery colors.

Now in the National Gallery of Art, Washington, The Feast of the Gods was originally painted by Giovanni Bellini in 1514 for Alfonso I d'Este's camerino in Ferrara. Titian reworked the landscape around 1529 to harmonize it with his own paintings in the same room. The painting has been extensively studied through X-ray and infrared reflectography, revealing at least three distinct campaigns of work (Bellini, Dosso Dossi, and Titian). Major restoration in the 1980s addressed structural issues and old retouching.