Bellini, Gentile

(active c. 1460-1507)

   Venetian painter; the son of Jacopo and brother of Giovanni Bellini. Gentile catered mainly to the scuole (confraternities) of Venice, though he is also known to have obtained governmental commissions, including a cycle in the Doge's Palace, destroyed by fire in 1577. His major extant works are the paintings he created for the Scuola di San Giovanni Evangelista to be hung in their meeting hall. Of these, the Procession of the Relic of the True Cross (1496; Venice, Galleria dell' Accademia) is a journalistic scene that records a specific procession in 1444 when the relic cured an ill man, proving the relic's validity. The work is invaluable not only for its artistic merits but also historically because it reveals the appearance of the façade of the Basilica of St. Mark as it looked in the late 15th century. Gentile included the now-destroyed St. Peter by Paolo Uccello on the basilica's left pinnacle. The Miracle of the Cross at the Bridge of San Lorenzo (1500; Venice, Galleria dell' Accademia), also painted by Gentile for the Scuola di San Giovanni, shows another miraculous event where the relic fell into the water and eluded all who tried to rescue it except Andrea Vendramin, the head of the confraternity. In 1479, the Venetian State sent Gentile to Constantinople, then under Turkish rule, to work for Sultan Mahomet II. Few works from his stay in the Turkish court have survived, mainly some portraits, including that of the sultan (1480) in the London National Gallery. His decorations for the imperial harem in Topkapi are also lost. Within a year, Gentile was back in Venice. He left, supposedly, because he feared for his life. The sultan had disapproved of a painting Gentile had shown him of the decollation of St. John the Baptist. He called in two slaves and ordered one of them to chop off the other's head. Then he exclaimed, "This is how a freshly severed head should look."