Height: 224 millimetres

Width: 334 millimetres (sight measurement)

The fragmentary inscription identifies this as a sketch by Giovanni ('Zi' = Zian or Zuan) for the painting 'Pope Alexander III giving a sword to Doge Sebastiano Ziani' from the series commemorating Ziani brokerage of peace between the Holy Roman Emperor, Frederick Barbarossa, and Pope Alexander III in 1177 in the Sala del Maggior Consiglio in the Doge's palace in Venice. These paintings by Gentile and his brother Giovanni, along with other Venetian artists, that replaced frescoes by Guariento da Verona executed in the late 1360s were destroyed by fire in 1577. The only visual record of Gentile's compositions in the series are a compositional for one of them at Chatsworth (Campbell and Chong no. 9, illustrated in colour p. 52) and the present copy.

A close copy after this drawing is in the Albertina, formerly attributed to Rembrandt might suggest that the present work once belonged to Rembrandt. Popham and Pouncey noted that the retouching had a Rembrandtesque flavour.

Lit.: H. Tietze and E. Tietze-Conrat, 'The Drawings of the Venetian Painters in the 15th and 16th Centuries', New York, 1944, no. 269, pp. 69-70; A.E. Popham and P. Pouncey, 'Italian drawings in the BM, the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries', London, 1950, I, no. 9, II, pl.VIII (with previous literature); exhib. cat., Nottingham and London, 'Drawing in the Italian Renaissance Workshop', 1983, p. 220, illustrated p. 221; J. Meyer zur Cappelen, 'Gentile Bellini', Stuttgart, 1985, no. B 14.IVa, pp. 147-8, fig. 93 (with further literature); C. Campbell and A. Chong, in exhib. cat., Boston, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum and London, National Gallery, 'Bellini and the East', 2005, under no. 9, p. 50

Popham & Pouncey 1950 Literature: S. Colvin, Prussian Jahrbuch, xiii (1892), pp. 23 ff. (repr.); B.M. Guide, 1892, no. 5; L. Venturi, Le origini della pittura veneziana, Venice, 1907, p. 344; Carlo Ridolfi, Le Maraviglie dell' Arte [1648], ed. D. von Hadeln, Berlin, i, 1914, p. 59, note; Van Marle, xvii, p. 176, note 2; Tietzes, no. 269.

There is a close copy in the Albertina, which is generally believed to be by Rembrandt (Hofstede de Groot, no. 1421; Schönbrunner-Meder, v, 559). It seems likely therefore that the present drawing may have belonged to Rembrandt's collection of Italian drawings, all the more so since the touching-up evident on the doge's hauberk and on the soldier second to the right has a distinctly Rembrandtesque appearance. The connection with the Sala del Maggior Consiglio of the Doge's Palace noted in the inscription was suggested by Wickhoff ('Repertorium', vi (1883), pp. 36 f.) at a time when only the copy was known to him. The author of the inscription, who rightly identifies the doge as Ziani and the pope as Alexander (III), seems to attribute the picture to Giovanni (Zian or Zuan) rather than Gentile (Zentil) Bellini. The picture of the pope handing the sword to the doge is mentioned and its Latin inscription given by Francesco Sansovino (‘Venetia Città Nobilissima’, 1581, f. 128v.), but he does not give the artist's name. Wickhoff and Colvin think that the painting in question is that described by Vasari (iii, p. 157) as the pope blessing the doge and ascribed by him to Gentile. Ridolfi, however, in his ‘Maraviglie dell' Arte’, 1648, i, pp. 41 f., seems to distinguish two pictures, both of which he ascribes to Gentile: the one representing the ‘Presentation of the Sword’, the other the ‘Blessing’. The background of the former, he says, showed S. Marco; that of the latter, the doge's palace. Hadeln, in his edition of Ridolfi (loc. cit.), suggests that Ridolfi, who was writing seventy years after the gutting of the Sala del Maggior Consiglio, has made two pictures of a single canvas containing two episodes. Against Hadeln's view it may be objected that in the series of paintings now to be seen in the Sala del Maggior Consiglio, made to replace those by the Bellini and others destroyed in the fire of 1577, a separate canvas is devoted to each of these subjects: the ‘Presentation of the Sword’ being by F. Bassano; the ‘Blessing’ by Paolo Fiammingo.