Giovanni Bellini is considered the founder of the Venetian School of Painting. He raised Venice to a centre of Renaissance art that rivalled Florence and Rome. A great landscape painter, Bellini was recognised for his extraordinary ability to use colour in the portrayal of light. The painting, Madonna and Child with Saints Peter and Paul, was once owned by Dawson Turner, the 19th century collector and patron of the arts, who lived in Great Yarmouth. Andrew Moore, keeper of art and senior curator with the Norfolk Museums and Archaeology Service is enthusiastic about the hanging of Bellini's work at Norwich Castle: "Giovanni Bellini's beautiful altarpiece is a fine example of Venetian Renaissance painting. "I am delighted that the painting is coming back to Norfolk as Norwich Castle's contribution to the Centenary of the National Art Collections Fund. "The fact that Great Yarmouth was home to a thriving community of passionate art collectors in the first half of the 1800s is practically forgotten now. "Paintings that once hung in Great Yarmouth are now in some of the greatest art collections - such as the National Gallery and the Wallace Collection in London. "Dawson Turner, the Great Yarmouth banker, owned this painting at the time when he employed both John Crome and John Sell Cotman as Drawing Masters for his daughters. "The altarpiece will be hung in the context of some of Cotman's finest oil paintings." The Great Yarmouth Bellini returns to Norfolk on special loan from Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery to celebrate the centenary of the National Art Collections Fund. Picture credit: The Madonna and Child enthroned with Saint Peter and Saint Paul and a Donor Giovanni Bellini (c.1435-1516) Courtesy Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery. | 
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