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Procession in St. Mark's SquareItalian: Processione in Piazza San Marco

Artist	Gentile Bellini
Year	c. 1496
Medium	Tempera and oil on canvas
Dimensions	367 cm x 745 cm
Location	Gallerie dell'Accademia, Venice

The Procession in St. Mark's Square (Italian: Processione in Piazza San Marco) is a 1496 oil painting by Italian Renaissance artist Gentile Bellini. Bellini was a leading Venetian painter in the fifteenth century. The painting depicts a miracle that occurred during the Feast of Saint Mark over fifty years earlier on 25 April 1444.

It belongs to a series of paintings that portray Miracles of the Holy Cross commissioned for the Scuola Grande di San Giovanni Evangelista, which housed a relic of the True Cross. The True Cross became an object of veneration in Venice and symbolizes the Scuola. During the Napoleonic era the painting came into public ownership. In 1820 it moved to the Gallerie dell'Accademia in Venice, where it resides today.

Background

Bellini belonged to a family of prominent Venetian painters. His father, Jacopo Bellini, spearheaded the use of oil paint in Venice. Gentile Bellini's younger brother, Giovanni Bellini, and his brother-in-law, Andrea Mantegna, were Italian painters as well. Bellini began using canvas in the 1460s which was optimal for oil paint and allowed for more realistic depictions of objects and events. Due to the decay of the first narrative cycle of the Story of Alexander III commissioned for the Scuola Grande, Gentile was commissioned to replace the frescoes with canvases in 1474. The replacement of fresco with canvas resulted in more accurate depictions of Byzantine mosaics.

Subject and techniques

The canvas shows an event that occurred during the Feast of Saint Mark on 25 April 1444, celebrating Mark the Evangelist, Venice's patron saint. It depicts a miracle fulfilled by the relic of the True Cross in response to the merchant’s prayer. The relic was said to be a piece of the Cross that Jesus was crucified on. The members of the Scuola processed the relic through St. Mark's Square (Italian: Piazza San Marco) while Jacopo de' Salis, a tradesman from Brescia, knelt before the relic. In the right of the center foreground, Jacopo prays for his dying son's recovery. Jacopo's son miraculously recovered before he returned home.

Detail.

In the foreground, Bellini painted the Confraternity in its white robes processing at the head of the procession. The large golden reliquary is suspended between them, carried beneath a canopy held by four Scuola members. Although the subject of the painting is ostensibly the miracle itself, the Brescian merchant is hardly visible in the crowd: he kneels in sumptuous red robes, immediately to the right of the last two canopy-bearers. Rather, the subject of the painting could be more accurately described as the procession, with a focus on the space of St. Mark's square and on St Mark's Basilica itself, with its Byzantine domes and glittering mosaics.

The viewer’s eye is drawn to scan the entire painting as it has no explicitly defined focal point. The defined background roots the painting in its location in Venice and reinforces the idea that miracles in Venice are one and the same. The painting validates the idea of miracles, which are unexpected and difficult to believe. This eye witness mode establishes the Scuola Grande di San Giovanni Evangelista's validity as an institution and anchors it to the place of Venice. The painting also validates the belief Venetians held that Venice was favored by God over other cities.

The painting has a festive yet formal tone with prominent hues of golds, reds, whites, and blacks. The perspective is widened to include the procession in its entirety. Bellini also used perspective to make it seem as though the viewer is presented with an order found and sustained by the state, as opposed to an order created. Thus, it reflects the state function of the Scuola. Bellini meticulously painted the topography, legitimizing the Scuola Grande di San Giovanni Evangelista's relic of the True Cross. In the sixteenth century, the poor were increasingly shown in Venetian art. Bellini was one of many Venetian painters who excluded the poor along with other undesirables from the space of Venice. Also, the Scuole Grandi's public spirit influenced the way acts of charity were presented. Both the giver and recipient are not given clear attention in the Procession in St. Mark's Square. Bellini used the busy multi-figure composition to obscure the motif, rather than enhance the charitable activity.

The procession’s organized form asserts an idealized image of civic unity and order. Bellini chose not to include less stately spectacles that were characteristic of the Piazza at this time. For instance, there is no depiction of encaged criminals, lavatories, vendors’ stalls, or the exhibition of mutants and oddities. The exclusion of such scenes was meant to present a credible visual narrative with minimal drama. Also, the painting does not give a full view of the church of San Marco. Bellini rearranged St Mark's Campanile, the bell tower of St Mark's Basilica, to show the Doge's Palace (Italian: Palazzo Ducale) where the doge and council chambers of the government resided. The doge was responsible for overseeing the evangelist's relics. The Doge, members of government, trumpeters, and standard-bearers are level with the campanile. The palace's location next to San Marco signifies a link between secular and sacred authority. Perhaps Bellini rearranged the composition to express future plans to reconstruct the Piazza so that it better served as an architectural display of the state.

Composition

During the Renaissance period, the six Scuole Grandi of Venice played key roles in patrician social life in Venice. These religious and charitable organizations were patrons of the arts. Each scuole roughly consisted of five to six hundred members. The Venetian population was mostly made up of manufacturers and merchants, like Jacopo de' Salis, during the Renaissance period. Venetian citizens were granted the right to the Scuole Grandi’s highest offices. This was especially significant for the support and funding of art because the Scuole Grandi had sufficient budgets and competed with one another with their artworks, buildings, and processional banners. The scuole were also subject to the authority of the Venetian state. Amid the flagellant movement of the thirteenth century, the Scuola Grande di San Giovanni Evangelista was formed in 1261. The Scuola belonged to the wealthiest and most influential confraternities in Venice.

The Procession in St. Mark's Square was one of several paintings commissioned for the Grand Hall of the Scuola Grande di San Giovanni Evangelista, the seat of the eponymous brotherhood in Venice. The commission included a total of nine large canvases, by prominent artists of the time such as Gentile, Perugino, Vittore Carpaccio, Giovanni Mansueti, Lazzaro Bastiani and Benedetto Rusconi. Beginning in 829, St Mark’s relics were present in Venice. The subject of the paintings are the miracles of a relic of the True Cross which the confraternity acquired in 1369. The item was donated to the brotherhood by Philippe de Mézières, chancellor of the Kingdom of Cyprus and Jerusalem in 1369, and soon became the object of veneration in the city. The canvasses were executed in 1496–1501.

Later history

Bellini later contributed the Miracle of the Cross at the Bridge of S. Lorenzo in 1500. Following Bellini's death in 1507, Giovanni overshadowed his brother as a most revered Venetian painter. However, during his lifetime, Bellini's work was more esteemed than that of Giovanni. By the time of the fire of 1577 which destroyed part of the Doge's Palace, the second narrative cycle commissioned for the Scuola Grande di San Giovanni Evangelista was finished. The Procession in St. Mark's Square belongs to this second narrative cycle which is the most significant Venetian ornamental ensemble of the Renaissance period.

The painting came under public ownership after Napoleonic suppression. Once it became government property, the painting was moved to the Gallerie dell’Accademia in 1820. Today, St. Mark's Square is Venice's main square and one of the world's most popular attractions. The Procession in St. Mark's Square is still located in Venice in the Gallerie dell'Accademia.

See also

• Miracle of the Cross at the Bridge of S. Lorenzo
• St. Mark Preaching in Alexandria

References

• De Vecchi, Pierluigi; Elda Cerchiari (1999). I tempi dell'arte. Milan: Bompiani. ISBN 88-451-7212-0 .
• Howard, Deborah, 1946- (2002). The architectural history of Venice. Quill, Sarah. (Rev. and enl. ed. with new photographs / by Sarah Quill and Deborah Howard ed.). New Haven: Yale University Press. ISBN 0-300-09029-3. OCLC 48876512.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
• Humfrey, Peter, 1947- (1995). Painting in Renaissance Venice. New Haven: Yale University Press. ISBN 0-300-06247-8. OCLC 31132099.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
• Martin, John; Brown, Patricia Fortini (1990-10). "Venetian Narrative Painting in the Age of Carpaccio". The American Historical Review. 95 (4): 1238. doi:10.2307/2163616. ISSN 0002-8762.
• Nichols, Tom (2007-04). "Secular Charity, Sacred Poverty: Picturing The Poor In Renaissance Venice". Art History . 30 (2): 139–169. doi :10.1111/j.1467-8365.2007.00536.x. ISSN  0141-6790.
• "Storia dell'arte e dell'architettura dal Gotico e Rinascimento al Barocco". Scuola San Giovanni (in Italian). Retrieved 2020-11-17.
• "Web Gallery of Art, searchable fine arts image database". www.wga.hu. Retrieved 2020-11-18.