Artist: Gentile Bellini (attributed)
Location: Correr Museum
Medium: Oil on panel (66 cm. X 48.5 cm.)
Treatment: Cleaning and restoration
Sponsor Status: Mara and Chuck Robinson

Leonardo Loredan, Doge from 1501 to 1521, led Venice’s heroic resistance to the League of Cambrai, the nearly complete European coalition established in 1509 to deprive Venice of all her possessions. Giovanni Bellini painted Doge Loredan’s portrait (National Gallery, London) though his older brother Gentile painted several official portraits of the Doge now in public and private collections. Attributions for these portraits fluctuate between Carpaccio and Gentile, but since Gentile was the official painter to the Doge, Gentile Bellini is the more common attribution. The painting in the Correr was once thought to be an important 19th-century copy of a lost original, but others suspect it is a painting by Gentile Belllini or his workshop.

The Correr Museum in Venice has been a repository of works of art for almost two centuries. Venetian nobleman Teodoro Correr donated his extensive collection, including this painting, to the city in 1830. In 1922, the collection moved to its present home in the Procuratie Nuove and the Napoleonic wing, along the south and west sides of Piazza San Marco respectively. Save Venice board member, art historian Prof. W. R. Rearick, selected several paintings from the museum’s storage that merit renewed study.

Cleaning of the dirty pictorial surface allowed for investigation of the painting’s status and condition.

Photo: Matteo De Fina