A pupil of Gentile da Fabriano, Bellini is considered one of the founders of Northern Italian Renaissance painting, who, along with his sons Gentile and Giovanni, helped introduce the principles of Florentine Renaissance art to their native Venice. However, almost none of Bellini’s paintings have survived, and he is known chiefly through his two volumes of sketchbooks, which reveal both his interest in landscape and experimentation with linear perspective. His son Gentile later presented one of these sketchbooks to Sultan Mehmet II in Istanbul in 1479. In the few altarpieces and other works known to be by Bellini, his use of gold pigment and graceful figuration reflect the decorative characteristics of both Byzantine and Gothic art, though his more heavily modeled later Madonnas and carefully observed perspectives reveal a growing awareness of Renaissance humanism. His son-in-law was Andrea Mantegna, who may also have been a pupil.