BELLINI Gentile (Gentile Bellini)

(ca. 1429-1507).
The legacy of the wizard is a colorful, detailed and documented the exact types of Venice at the moment the most important events in the history of the city. His first works - started in 1474 large canvases to decorate the Doges' Palace - were burned during a fire in 1577. However, on this painting you can get an idea for another picture painted by Gentile for Scuola - Venetian religious brotherhoods, such as the composition procession on the square of St.. Mark (Venice, Gallerie dell'Accademia), part of the cycle of paintings that he created in 1496 along with other artists for the Brotherhood of St. John the Evangelist. And the kind of celebration on the square of St.. Mark submitted the picture, and the appearance of Venice, its architecture, costumes are designed to perpetuate its residents a miracle - the healing of the particle of the Holy Cross, which accompanies the transfer of the solemn procession.

Venice had close ties with the Middle East, in 1479-1480 Gentile Bellini as an artist and served as military adviser at the court of the sultan in Constantinople. The result of this trip are pictures in which he tried to combine the achievements of the Italian Renaissance with the flatness and decorative Oriental art, such as Portrait of Sultan Mehmed II (c.. 1480, London, National Gallery). Soon, the artist returned to Venice and continued to write genre-historical types hometown. After his death in 1507, Giovanni Gentile Bellini finished work-older brother.