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Themes in Italian Renaissance painting

Giovanni Bellini's portrait of the elected Duke of Venice has an official air and could hardly be more formal.

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The figures placed at opposing diagonals seen in this early Madonna and Child by Leonardo da Vinci was a compositional theme that was to recur in many of his works and be imitated by his pupils and by Raphael.

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In Bellini's painting, while on one hand, the figures and the setting give the effect of great realism, Bellini's interest in Byzantine icons is displayed in the hierarchical enthronement and demeanour of the Madonna.

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Although the subjects of some of them were later remembered for their achievements or their noble lineage, the identities of many have been lost and that of even the most famous portrait of all time, Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa, is open to speculation and controversy.

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Leonardo da Vinci did detailed and measured drawings of the background Classical ruins preparatory to commencing the unfinished Adoration of the Magi.

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Leonardo da Vinci abandoned any sort of formal canopy and surrounded the Madonna and Child with the grandeur of nature into which he set the figures in a carefully balanced ye seemingly informal trapezoid composition.

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In Giovanni Bellini's Deposition the artist, while not attempting to suggest the brutal realities of the crucifixion, has attempted to give the impression of death.

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By contrast, Andrea di Bonaiuto, painting for the Dominicans at the new church of Santa Maria Novella, completed a huge fresco of the Triumph of the Church, which shows the role of the church in the work of Salvation, and in particular, the role of the Dominicans, who also appear symbolically as the Hounds of Heaven, shepherding the people of God.

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In Leonardo da Vinci's John the Baptist, elements of the painting, including the corners of the model's eyes and mouth, are disguised by shadow, creating an air of ambiguity and mystery.

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Leonardo da Vinci's Madonna of the Rocks, now in the National Gallery, London but previously in a chapel in Milan, is one of many images that was used in the petitioning of the Blessed Virgin Mary against plague.

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Giovanni Bellini has created a detailed landscape with a pastoral scene between the foreground and background mountains.

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In his Agony in the Garden, Giovanni Bellini uses the fading sunset on a cloudy evening to create an atmosphere of tension and impending tragedy.