Title of Artwork: “St. Mark Preaching in Alexandria”
Artwork by Gentile Bellini
Year Created 1507
Summary of St. Mark Preaching in Alexandria
Located in Milan’s Pinacoteca di Brera, Gentile and Giovanni Bellini’s oil painting St. Mark Preaching in Alexandria dates from 1504–07.
All About St. Mark Preaching in Alexandria
To be displayed at the Scuola Grande di San Marco in Venice, the work is a large canvas (telero). With a surface area of 26 metres, it boasts an abundance of narrative and iconographic content. Several decades later, Giorgione and Tintoretto completed the series of paintings depicting the life of St. Mark, and they are now displayed in Venice’s museums.
Despite the fact that Gentile began the canvas in July 1504 and finished it “mostly” when he died in February 1507, the painting was left to his brother Giovanni as per Gentile’s will. Giovanni finished it off, but he made a few tweaks along the way. To his brother’s offer to finish it, Giovanni probably said “no,” which led to the inclusion of the clause in the will that committed a valuable collection of drawings to Giovanni should the painting be completed. In a letter dated March 7th, 1507, the Scuola verified that Giovanni had been given the commission.
While in Constantinople in 1479–1480, Gentile had the opportunity to study real-life aspects that he included in the scenario. Instead of Ottoman, Mamluk architectural characteristics hint that the artist may have travelled to Jerusalem.
Vasari only mentioned Gentiles in the 1550 edition of the Vite and left them out of the 1568 edition, therefore it’s unclear which parts were done by which brother. It is widely accepted today that the backdrop was done by Gentile, except for the altered sections and probably the characters on the right hand. The portraits on the left and some of the centre group are assigned to Giovanni with some degree of certainty.
There was a sliver of canvas taken away from the top of the painting where the buildings ended at some point in the past. Napoleonic invasion brought the artwork to the Brera in 1809.
Information Citations
En.wikipedia.org, https://en.wikipedia.org/.
