Madonna and Child

Giovanni Bellini was the dominant painter of Venice for half a century, and he painted Madonnas of this type throughout his career for private devotion in Venetian homes. What makes them extraordinary is the light. Look at how the flesh of the child and the face of the Virgin are modelled with soft transitions rather than hard lines, a result of the oil technique Bellini adopted from Netherlandish painting in the 1470s. The blue mantle is built up in transparent layers over a lighter underpaint so that it glows. The landscape is not decoration: its clear morning air gives the whole picture its feeling of calm, and it shows the same attention to real light that Bellini's pupils Giorgione and Titian would learn from him.

The museum bought the painting in 2009, one of its earliest acquisitions, as the anchor of its Renaissance chapter. In the galleries it hangs near works from the Islamic world and Asia of the same decades, in keeping with the museum's idea that the Renaissance was one of several connected cultures around the Mediterranean. Notice the small town in the distance at the right: Bellini often placed a real Veneto hill town behind his holy figures, tying heaven to the world his patrons knew.

Did You Know? Bellini was still painting at over eighty, and Albrecht Dürer, visiting Venice in 1506, wrote that although very old he was still the best of them all.