Virtually explore this gallery with Smarthistory as your guide
Some background
videos + essays
Link to the Pinacoteca di Brera's website
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.
Andrea Mantegna, Dead Christ
Mantegna was fascinated by perspective. His radical foreshortening and realism focus attention on Christ’s wounds.
Umberto Boccioni and the Futurist City
The Futurists called for the destruction of museums, libraries, and cultural monuments and glorified modern technology and the speed of automobiles, trains, and airplanes.
Devotional confraternities (scuole) in Renaissance Venice
Brotherhoods lent stability to religious and civic life. These wealthy institutions also commissioned paintings.
Jacopo Tintoretto, The Finding of the Body of Saint Mark
As it recesses, Tintoretto’s strange space collapses time. No wonder Saint Mark multiplies.
Raphael, Marriage of the Virgin
Who gets the girl? This event may be sacred, but Raphael treats us to a very human performance.
