User:DrMedRenArtHistory/Procession in St. Mark's Square

The Procession in St. Mark's Square (Italian: Processione in piazza San Marco) is a tempera on canvas painting by the Italian Renaissance artist Gentile Bellini, painted in 1496 (dated). It is housed in the Gallerie dell'Accademia in Venice.

Patron
The Venetian lay confraternity, the Scuola Grande di San Giovanni Evangelista (one of Venice's six so-called Scuole Grandi) commissioned nine large narrative paintings collectively known as the Miracles of True Cross (Italian: Miracoli della Croce) that illustrate scenes about the relic of the True Cross.

Subject
These nine paintings of the miracles of the True Cross were originally displayed in the Sala Dell'Albergo, the meeting room for the governing bodies of the Scuola Grande di San Giovanni Evangelista. In 1369, Philippe de Mézières, chancellor of the Kingdom of Cyprus and Jerusalem, gave the Scuola Grande di San Giovanni Evangelista a fragment of the True Cross, which had been previously given to him by Peter Thomas the Latin Patriarch of Constantinople. Save Venice Inc. funded a virtual reconstruction of the Oratory of the Cross to illustrate how the cycle of paintings would have been installed in the sixteenth century.

Inscription and date
Located directly below the processional canopy that holds the monstrance with the relic of the True Cross, Bellini signed and dated the painting with a Latin inscription found on a cartellino. It reads: "MCCCCLXXXXVI • GENTILIS BELLINI VENETI EQUITIS • CRUCIS AMORE INCENSUS • OPUS"

The inscription was likely repainted. Over the years, two Venetian artists, after Bellini's time, proposed two different ways in which it could have originally been written: Carlo Ridolfi proposed, "Gentilis Bellinus eques amore incensus crucis MCCCCLXXXXVI," whereas Anton Maria Zanetti put forward, "Gentilis Bellini veneti equitis crucis / amore incensi opus MCCCCLXXXXVI."

The Setting: Piazza San Marco
The painting depicts a grand religious procession, led by the Scuola Grande di San Giovanni Evangelista, filled with a frieze of figures orderly marching across the composition from right to left through the Piazza San Marco (the square of St. Mark's) in front of St. Mark's Basilica in Venice. Once a year, on April 25 (the feast day of St. Mark, the city's patron saint), the fragment of the True Cross was processed through the streets in a monstrance made out of crystal and silver-gilt. The True Cross reliquary is seen in the foreground of the painting, just left of center of the central portal of the façade of St. Mark's Basilica in the background, to reinforce the central role of the Scuola Grande di San Giovanni Evangelista, as well as its members' devotion and loyalty to the Republic of Venice. The holy relic is carried beneath a processional canopy (Italian: baldacchino), supported with stave by four of the lay brothers (Italian: fratelli) of the Scuola Grande di San Giovanni Evangelista. From the scalloped-edged border of the canopy hang miniature coats of arms of the five Scuole Grandi of Venice (the sixth one was not formed until after Bellini's paining). The brothers who are not holding up the canopy carry large processional candles or tapers. All of the brothers of the Scuola Grande di San Giovanni Evangelista are dressed in long white robes with vertical lines that create deep folds that resemble the fluting of columns. The robes have red insignia to further indicate that the figures are members of the Scuola Grande di San Giovanni Evangelista. At the front of the procession (at the far left of the painting's foreground), the members of the choir of the Scuola Grande di San Giovanni Evangelista do not hold the tapers, but rather carry choir books in their hands as they sing. On the far left of the painting in the middle ground, members of the other four Scuole Grandi have gathered: they are seen waiting in distinct lines of rank. They stand before the Procuratie Vecchie, a two story building with an arcade filled with shops on the bottom floor, and an arched portico on the second floor that includes female figures and draped carpets of Middle-Eastern origin (see: Oriental carpets in Renaissance painting). It has been argued that the presence of these women was a crucial component of Venetian religious festivals. On the far right of the painting in the middle ground, the procession that follows the brothers of the Scuola Grande di San Giovanni Evangelista include a group of musicians playing various horned instruments, immediately followed by the Chapter Canons of St. Mark's Basilica (often described as the "Ducal Segment"). The current Doge of Venice, Agostino Barbarigo (r. 1486-1501), is seen just before a golden umbrella-like canopy dressed in full ducal regalia: a mantle of gold and silver lamé brocade made with ermine fur, with a ceremonial corno ducale, a type of headgear. Bellini's decision to embed the Doge among the throng of figures in the procession underscores the concept of mediocritas, the Venetian Republican ethos that favored modesty or moderation over a display of power and magnificence. The message was that the Doge showed humble respect for the religious traditions of the city and Scuole Grandi by emphasizing his equality and similarity. In the center of the relatively empty plaza, is a smattering of clustered figures that suggest a natural randomness, as if their gathering is totally happenstance. Moreover, the figures represent the international and cosmopolitan demographic range of fifteenth-century Venice. This include Venetian citizens, gentlemen, ladies, and children; foreign merchant from Germany, Turkey, Greece; theatrical performers from the Compagnie della Calza seen wearing parti-colored hose; along with a few friars, an almsgiver, and a water bearer. The almsgiver, depicted as an older man wearing black, offers alms to older women sends the message that both the city of Venice and the Scuole Grandi were agents of charity, thereby bringing honor to the city as well as to the members of the confraternities, and in this instance specifically the Scuola Grande di San Giovanni Evangelista i.

The Story
Bellini's painting illustrates the ultimate of God's powers within a compsolitan setting: a miracle that took place on April 25, 1444. This miracle, involving a merchant, Jacopo de' Salis, was specifically linked to the Scuola Grande di San Giovanni Evangelista. In the procession, just behind two of the canopy-bearers, a parting of the lay brothers has occurred, allowing the viewer to witness Jacopo de' Salis, dressed in a sumptuous red cloak (usually reserved only for Venetian patricians and secretaries) and shown kneeling in prayer, the only figure in the entire composition shown genuflecting. He is also shown not wearing any type of headgear or a hat.

Jacopo de' Salis was a merchant, described as "of good reputation and condition," from the Lombardian town of Brescia who had come to Venice on business and subsequently learned that his son back home had endured a serious head injury. The next day, he decided to attend the solemn religious ceremony sponsored by the Scuola Grande di San Giovanni Evangelista in the square of St. Mark's in front of St. Mark's Basilica. As the reliquary passed by him, he knelt before it, demonstrating his belief in and devotion of the relic's powers. His son was healed, as he discovered upon his return home. In turn, he informed the Guardian of the Scuola Grande di San Giovanni Evangelista of the news and promised to bring his son to the confraternity in order to pay reverence and show devotion to the relic of the True Cross.

The Composition and backdrop
The painting's composition comprises two registers of defined space: in the foreground is a stage-like setting where a dense and compact group of lay brothers of the Scuola Grande di San Giovanni Evangelista process, while the background is filled with the imposing architectural backdrop of St. Mark's Basilica, painted so tall and imposing that the top of its onion domes have been cropped at the top of the painting. These two pictorial planes are therefore juxtaposed against one another: one is filled with a longitudinal mass of processing figures, while the other the space rises vertically, venturing beyond the pictorial plane. Gentile also used linear perspective in the composition. The French theorist Jean Pèlerin in his book, De Artificiali Perspectiva (1505) explored the idea of how the scattering of figures in an open space (like that seen in Gentile's painting of the piazza) reduced in size and thus functioned as a means to measure out the receeding distance of the space.

Style
Bellini's stylistic approach to the story of the Miracles of True Cross is common among the other extant works of the pictorial cycle of the True Cross, by capturing a religious narrative related to the relic. The narrative mode of the Procession in St. Mark's Square has been described as an "eye-witness" approach to the story (Latin: historia) in which the painter presents an unedited record of the event, one that appears true to everyday life and filled with microscopic details and topographical exactitude. Indeed, Gentile Bellini was a member of the Scuola della Carità, so would have participated in the annual procession on the feast day of St. Mark year after year, and was therefore quite familiar with the order of the processions and celebrations that unfolded during the festivities.

In the painting, Bellini created a realistic architectural setting, assembled a cast of characters, and illustrated the religious narrative in a way that appeared natural, simple, and objective. His miniaturist technique is noticeable precise. Scholars have been able to substantiate the verisimilitude of Bellini's depiction of the procession as an accurate record of the event because of surviving ceremonial books that dictated where, how, and what the processions would do on a given feast day. Moreover, while Bellini's attention to detail has allowed scholars to reconstruct three of the four now lost mosaics of the façade (see below: Painting as a visual record), he did make a notable change to the location of the bell tower on the right: he recessed it to allow a better viewing of the Doge's Palace and the Porta della Carta, the ceremonial entrance to the Ducal Palace. Bellini's style of naturalism also allowed him to present a "mythic image of Venice," a place both spiritual and culture perfection was fulfilled.

While the story illustrated in the painting records a specific miraculous event from 1444, the focus was not overtly on that specific miracle or even on the kneeling figure of Jacopo de' Salis whose presence was more emblematic of the larger message: an annual procession of the True Cross was a ritualistic festivity where miraculous events could take place. The painting served as a vertiable record of the event that conveyed a sense of timelessness and a continuity of religious feast days that was bigger than the specific event represented.

Painting as a visual record


Gentile's painting also serves as visual evidence and a historical document of what the façade of St. Mark's Basilica looked like in the fifteenth century. The West façade of the basilica is punctuated by five deeply recessed portals. Aside from the central portal, the four remaining portals (two on the south and two on the north) have lunettes that are decorated with four mosaics, originally created in the thirteenth century, that narrate the translatio, the translation of St. Mark's relics from Alexandria to Venice. Only the mosaic on the farthest left of the façade, in the North portal (Porta di Sant' Alipio), survives from the thirteenth century. The other three mosaics were replaced with newer mosaics over the course of the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries, but Bellini's detailed painting technique essentially recorded what they looked like before the were removed, allowing scholars to reconstruct the story that the mosaics illustrated originally. In Bellini's painting, the South portal (at the far right) recounts how the Venetians had stolen the bones of the saint from the Egyptian city of Alexandria, in what has been described by scholars as a "sacred theft." Moving to the left, the next portal shows how the relics were then smuggled away on a ship from Alexandria. Bellini's painting of the mosaic is so detailed that it even includes a depiction of the famous Lighthouse of Alexandria, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. The story picks up on the North portal (left side of the central portal) with the arrival of St. Mark's body to the city of Venice. The relics were presented to the Doge of Venice and venerated, as seen in the religious procession (the same central subject depicted in the foreground of Bellini's painting). Finally, the sole surviving mosaic from the thirteenth century, on the North portal of Sant' Alipio (far left), and echoed in Bellini's painting, depicts the completed St. Mark's Basilica, which was constructed as a large reliquary to house the relic (though in reality it had not been built when the relics originally arrived from Alexandria). Bellini also painted the four bronze Horses of Saint Mark seen in both the original mosaic and also surmounted of the façade of St. Mark's Basilica (replaced with replicas today), which were stolen in 1204 during the Sack of Constantinople during the Fourth Crusade.

Scholars have noted that the unfolding of the narrative on the façade of St. Mark's Basilica, from right to left, underscores the movement of the relic from East to West. Moreover, because Bellini captured architectural momuments, like the Lighthouse of Alexandria and St. Mark's Basilica, the viewer of these mosaics were given topographical markers to help guide them through the story that began in Alexandria and ended in Venice.

Preparatory drawing
A pen and brown ink over red chalk preparatory drawing of the painting survives on paper at the British Museum in London. Surviving preliminary drawings and sketches by fifteenth-century Venetian painters, with the exception of Vittore Carpaccio, are exceptionally rare. Gentile's drawing illustrates his interest in creating scenes from a bird's eye view, something that is not reflected in the final version of the painting. The drawing also shows how Bellini used figures as "depth markers" in order to measure out the receding space on a two-dimensional place, as he worked with the rules of linear perspective in the composition. Otto Pächt describes these figures as "schematic and doll-like" that help to structure the overall compositional arrangement.

Provenance
The painting was removed from the Scuola’s Oratory of the Cross in 1806 and then were acquired by the Gallerie dell'Accademia on July 4, 1820, following the Napoleonic Suppression during the era of the Napoleonic Kingdom of Italy, when the monastic religious orders relinquished works of art that became the possession of the state, the Kingdom of Lombardy–Venetia.

Conservation
Gentile Bellini’s Procession in Piazza San Marco was slated to undergo conservation in early 2022 at the Gallerie dell’Accademia's Conservation and Diagnostics Laboratories in Venice. The conservation project was sponsored by the non-profit organization Save Venice Inc. and funded by a large donations by Arnold M. Bernstein with support from Professor Patricia Fortini Brown. The conservation involves removal of "the dirt and grime, oxidized old varnishes, and discolored inpainting and residues left from nineteenth-century conservation treatments by meticulously thinning and removing these non-original surface layers. Losses will be filled using removable conservation paint and a final coat of protective varnish will be applied."