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Madonna and Child

Giovanni Bellini

Madonna and Child

c. 1470-1475

One of the numerous 'Madonna and Child' panels painted by Giovanni Bellini in the 1480s, the version in the Accademia Carrara in Bergamo shows the Virgin in a deep blue hood cradling the infant Christ on her knee as she gazes toward the viewer. Behind them a tender Lombard landscape opens in Bellini's signature aerial perspective, and the quiet emotional charge between mother and child is carried by the cool, luminous light. Made for the private devotion of a north-Italian patrician family, it is a valuable record of how the Venetian Renaissance diffused into the smaller centres of the Bergamo plain.

Image source: Wikimedia Commons

Madonna and Child — Giovanni Bellini | Museum Map