The room exemplifies the activity of two of the most important workshops in Venice in the second half of the fifteenth century, where, according to common practice in Venice at the time, artists belonging to the same family nucleus or related to each other would work together. These workshops were those of Jacopo Bellini (where his sons Gentile and Giovanni also trained) and of the Murano artist Antonio Vivarini (his brother and then his son Alvise also worked in this workshop).

The pieces on display here, which were all produced between the early 1440s and 1460s, are, in differing ways and to differing degrees, testament to these artists’ desire to move beyond late-Gothic artistic language (as can be seen in the works in the first room) towards a more modern conception of space and volume, stimulated by the innovations of the Renaissance brought to Venice by Tuscan artists and immediately elaborated by Andrea Mantegna and Donatello.