Gentile Bellini and Giovanni Bellini, Saint Mark Preaching in Alexandria


Bellini imagines Saint Mark preaching in a collage of different times and places: ancient Alexandria, 16th-century Venice, and the Ottoman Empire.

Gentile Bellini (completed by Giovanni Bellini), Saint Mark Preaching in Alexandria, 1504–07, oil on canvas, 347 x 770 cm (Brera Pinacoteca, Milan). Speakers: Dr. Beth Harris and Dr. Steven Zucker


Additional resources

This painting at the Brera Pinacoteca

Caroline Campbell, et al., Bellini and the East (London: National Gallery Company, 2005).

David Carrier, “A Renaissance Fantasy Image of the Islamic World: Gentile and Giovanni Bellini’s ‘Saint Mark Preaching in Alexandria,'” Source: Notes in the History of Art, volume 28, number 1 (2008), pp. 16–19.


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Cite this page as: Dr. Beth Harris and Dr. Steven Zucker, "Gentile Bellini and Giovanni Bellini, Saint Mark Preaching in Alexandria," in Smarthistory, August 22, 2023, accessed October 1, 2023, https://smarthistory.org/gentile-bellini-and-giovanni-bellini-saint-mark-preaching-in-alexandria/.