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, <em>Saint Mark Preaching in Alexandria</em>](https://smarthistory.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/BelliniSaintMarkThumb-1.jpg)
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, <em>Dead Christ</em>](https://smarthistory.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/mantegna0thumb-570x350.jpg)
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](https://smarthistory.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/Boccioni-city-rises-thumb-570x350.jpg)
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](https://smarthistory.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/Devotional-confraternities-Venice-thumb-570x350.jpg)
Devotional confraternities (scuole) in Renaissance Venice
Brotherhoods lent stability to religious and civic life. These wealthy institutions also commissioned paintings.
![Jacopo Tintoretto, <em>The Finding of the Body of Saint Mark</em>](https://smarthistory.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/tintorettofindingthebodyofstmark-thumb-570x350.jpg)
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, <em>Marriage of the Virgin</em>](https://smarthistory.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/Raphael-Marriage-of-the-Virgin-thumb-570x350.jpg)
Raphael, Marriage of the Virgin
Who gets the girl? This event may be sacred, but Raphael treats us to a very human performance.