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Gentile Bellini, like his brother Giovanni, after a natural apprenticeship with his father Jacopo, was influenced by the new developments from Tuscany which had a flourishing centre in Padua led by Donatello. But from his early works onwards he tended towards an interpretation, still mediaeval in spirit, of the classicism of his brother-in-law, Andrea Mantegna.
In this work portraying Lorenzo Giustiniani just nine years after his death (1456), which was originally in the church of Madonna dell'Orto, the search for three-dimensional form is undermined by the evident design and the simplified spatial perspective. Gentile Bellini is an observer who here transcribes with harsh realism the physical features of a man worn out by age and asceticism.
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