Gentile Bellini
(c. 1429
– February 23, 1507)
was an Italian
painter.
Born in Venice,
the son of the painter Jacopo Bellini,
he was christened Gentile after Jacopo's master, Gentile da Fabriano.
From 1474 he was the official portrait artist for the Doges of Venice.
Much of Gentile Bellini's surviving
work consists of very large paintings for public buildings,
including those for the Scuola Grande di San Marco
(1470s), painted in conjunction with his brother, the even
better known Giovanni Bellini.
The Scuola Grande di San Giovanni Evangelista hired Bellini
amongst other artists to paint a narrative cycle. Bellini
painted three oil on canvas paintings. The most beautiful,
the Procession of the True Cross in Piazza San Marco
(now in the Gallerie dell'Accademia,
Venice) was painted in 1496. Bellini depicts a man
witnessing a miracle in the Piazza; this painting gained the
Scuola huge prestige.
In 1478 he was chosen by the
government of Venice to go to Istanbul
and finish a portrait of Sultan Mehmed II
(now in the National Gallery, London,
but largely overpainted). It has been noticed that the
portrait is like one of the figures in a painting by Marco Palmezzano,
Jesus among the Doctors in the Temple (Brisighella,
near Forlì
and Ravenna).
So the dating and authorship of the portrait by Bellini have
been placed in question.
Subsequently an Oriental flavour
appears in several of his paintings, including the portrait
of a Turkish artist and St. Mark Preaching at Alexandria
(Brera,
Milan). The last was completed by his brother, Giovanni Bellini.
A portrait by Gentile Bellini and
workshop of the much-loved Venetian Beato Lorenzo
Giustiniani is at the Bagatti Valsecchi Museum
in Milan. In his last years he was the first master of Titian.
