Gentile Bellini (c.1429-1507), Venetian painter, was the son, and pupil, of Jacopo Bellini, and brother of Giovanni Bellini. He was perhaps named for his father's master Gentile da Fabriano. His career was highly successful. He was painter to the Signoria in Venice. He was knighted in 1469, and was recommended by the Venetian state to work for the Sultan in Constantinople between 1479 and 1481 - a post which was politically as well as artistically of considerable importance to Venice. His cycle of paintings illustrating the history of Venice for the Ducal Palace in Venice was an important commission but destroyed in the fire of 1577.
Where Kugler, ed. Eastlake, Handbook of the History of Painting, Part One, The Italian Schools, First Edition, merely comments that 'in these works of Gentile the heads display more softness than those of Giovanni, but much less character', the focus of Ruskin 's interest is in the architectural detail, and the evidence for the gilding and mosaics of St. Marks, the frescoes and the colour of Venice, the loss of which he continually regrets. Ruskin gives examples (MP I:105) and (MP I:106) and at Works, 9.325 of the architectural painting of Gentile Bellini and of Carpaccio. Ruskin remarks at Works, 11.27 on the evidence of Gentile Belliini about the fresco colouring of the Gothic palaces, something which Canaletto is disparaged for not doing, and which is discussed in relation to the work of Veronese, Giorgione and Titian.
Ruskin discusses mainly the Procession in the Piazza San Marco. This together with Gentile's Miracle of the True Cross at the Bridge of San Lorenzo and Miraculous Healing of Pietro de' Ludovici, is a part of a cycle of paintings on the Miracles of the Relic of the True Cross, made for the Scuola di San Giovanni Evangelista. The paintings are now, and were in Ruskin's time, in the gallery of the Academy of Venice.