_Gentile Bellini_ (Venetian: 1427-1507).
Gentile was the elder brother of Giovanni (189), and was named
after Gentile da Fabriano under whom his father had studied.
In 1464, after severe training in his father's school, he
moved from Padua to Venice, and was employed by the State.
His high reputation is shown by the fact that, when in 1479
the Sultan Mahomet II. applied to the Venetians to send him a
good painter, he was deputed by them to go to Constantinople.
His visit there was marked by a well-known incident. He showed
the Sultan a picture of Herodias's daughter with the head of
John the Baptist. The Sultan objected to the bleeding head
as untrue to nature, and to prove his point ordered a slave
to be beheaded in Bellini's presence. The painter fled from
the scene of such experiments, but the influence of his visit
is to be seen in the oriental costumes which he was fond of
introducing into his pictures (as in the studies in the British
Museum and the library of Windsor Castle). The portrait of
the great Ottoman conqueror acquired by the late Sir Henry
Layard is an autograph replica of the work painted by Gentile
at Constantinople. On his return to Venice he was taken into
the permanent employment of the State, and executed many works
in the Ducal Palace and elsewhere; some were destroyed in
the fire of 1577, others remain. In 1486 Titian, then a boy
of nine, entered Gentile's studio. Easel pictures by him are
very scarce. His principal works are at Venice, and are the
most valuable record extant of the city as it was in his time.
They are described and highly praised by Ruskin in his _Guide
to the Academy at Venice_. In the same style is the "St. Mark
preaching at Alexandria," now in the Brera at Milan. This work,
left unfinished when Gentile died, was completed, as his will
enjoined, by Giovanni.
Supposed to be a portrait of Girolamo Malatini, Professor of
Mathematics in Venice (notice his brass compasses), who is said to
have taught Gentile and his brother Giovanni the rules of perspective.
"The portrait fully justifies the fame that Gentile had acquired as a
painter of portraits, and shows him the forerunner of Titian" (Layard's
edition of "Kugler," i. 306). The prominence given in this picture to
the sitter's hands should be noticed. The older tradition strictly
limited portraiture to the representation of the head only, or at most
to the bust. Afterwards the expressiveness of the human hand _per se_
came to be recognised (see Mr. Herbert Cook's _Giorgione_, p. 19, and
compare the portraits Nos. 808 and 1440).