Perhaps Titian’s letter was meant simply to flatter, but his words—and this painting—point to the powerful role played by Renaissance patrons. To modern sensibilities it seems unthinkable that anyone would order significant parts of a work by Giovanni Bellini—father of the Venetian Renaissance—painted over, but that is just what Alfonso d’Este did. Twice. Ultimately Titian, painter to popes and princes, and a student of Bellini’s, brought Feast of the Gods to its current state. In a real sense, though, Alfonso must equally be counted among its “artists.” Feast of the Gods is not only the most important mythological painting from the Renaissance in North America, but it is also perhaps the most intriguing.

It was commissioned for Alfonso’s private study in Ferrara, called the camerino d’alabastro. This was a retreat where the duke could admire his collection of ancient medals and statuettes and enjoy pastoral scenes of gods and goddesses reveling in the delights of love and nature. Paintings such as Feast of the Gods, which illustrates a ribald episode from Ovid, appealed both to Alfonso’s taste for the sensual and to his interest in antiquity. Working with a humanist scholar, the duke originally conceived an entire suite of bacchanals painted by the finest artists of the day, including Raphael and Michelangelo (whose commissions never materialized). All were to celebrate Bacchus and Venus, the gods of wine and love. Feast of the Gods was the first of the works to be completed, in 1514. It was the last major painting by Bellini, who was almost 90 years old when he finished it. As Albrecht Dürer said, he was “very old, but still the best there is.” It was Bellini who first mastered the luminous color that would be the glory of Venetian painting for centuries to come.

When Bellini died two years later, Alfonso turned to Titian, the most brilliant of Bellini’s pupils, and to his own court artist, Dosso Dossi, to complete his bacchanal project. In all, four of the camerino bacchanals are known today. When the camerino was dismantled in 1598, an inventory listed “a painting by Bellini with a landscape by Titian.” Clearly, this referred to the Feast of the Gods, and closer examination shows two distinct artists at work. Compare the background on the left and right sides. On the right, a screen of tree trunks is thinly painted with the same detailed precision that is found in the figures. This is Bellini’s meticulous style. On the left, wild mountain terrain, animated with tiny satyrs and running stags, is brushed with Titian’s freer style. Art historians had long concluded that Alfonso asked Titian to “touch up” Feast of the Gods, probably to harmonize it with his own bacchanals.

But x-ray and infrared studies reveal that Titian had not been the first to alter Bellini’s original composition. Bellini’s once-continuous screen of trees below Titian’s mountain had already been replaced on the left side by a low hill set with classical buildings. In all likelihood this change had been made by Dosso to satisfy the duke’s  taste for antiquity. Dosso also added bright green foliage to Bellini’s trees on the right. Of all Dosso’s contributions, it is only this foliage—and the pheasant sitting somewhat awkwardly in its midst—that Titian left unaltered in his own later campaign of repainting. Did Alfonso, an amateur painter who was reported to fancy pheasants, paint the bird himself? Did Alfonso “picture” himself in another way as well? Some evidence suggests that Feast of the Gods contains cryptic references to the duke’s marriage to Lucrezia Borgia, perhaps even portraits of the couple.

Titian was a master in all genres: he produced dignified and insightful portraits, Madonnas of modesty and charm, playfully joyous mythological pictures, sensuous nudes, and meditative religious works. He took from Bellini a typically Venetian approach to color, his early works often juxtaposing brilliant contrasting hues. After about 1530, the year of his wife’s death, Titian more often worked within a more narrow tonal range, using subtle glazes to create complex nuances of color. During the last 20 years of his life, Titian's handling of paint grew looser, opening up a wider gamut of expressive possiblities. Thin glazes appear along with heavy impasto, each a mark of the artist’s own presence on the canvas.

Titian died in 1576, as an outbreak of the plague roiled through Venice, but it is not known if he died of the disease. He was buried in Santa Maria Glorisa dei Frari, where his dramatic altarpiece, The Assumption of the Virgin, had been installed nearly 60 years before.