Giovanni Bellini, 'Madonna of the Meadow', about 1500-5

The Virgin Mary, seated on the ground in a grassy meadow, adores the sleeping Christ Child on her lap. The oval shape made by her hands as she gently presses her fingertips together in prayer echoes the shape of her face and hairline; the angle of her head as she looks down mirrors the curve of her right hand. This subtle tilt to the right is the only thing that disrupts the symmetry of the triangular shape of her body. This imposing shape, made bolder through the startling blue of her robe, creates a sense of serenity and calm; the Virgin’s body is an anchor in the scene.

Giovanni Bellini was one of the first Italian painters to use natural settings to enhance the meaning of his pictures. Here, the still and silent Virgin contrasts with the landscape to create an image rich in meaning. The varying shapes of the clouds, from thin and wispy to fat and fluffy, and the shadows on them give the impression of changeable weather. The oxen in the smallholding behind are rubbing their heads together; the herder, with his arm behind his back, is pacing the land. To the Virgin’s left, a snake menaces a crane which raises its wings in fright. This detail has been traced to the famous pastoral odes written by the Roman poet, Virgil – a literary allusion incorporated for an educated clientele – and is perhaps a reference to good versus evil (symbolised by the snake). The delicate poplars clothed in miniature lime-green foliage seem to bend in the breeze. Bellini may have been inspired by altarpieces in Venice painted by northern European artists like Jan van Eyck and Dirk Bouts, who had made careful studies of the way light affects how objects – and the natural world – appear. The clarity of the light, which casts a pale glow on everything it touches, from the Virgin’s right sleeve to the walls of the castle in the distance, suggests it is springtime.

Spring has not yet come to the tree with naked branches where a vulture, a foreboding symbol of death, is perched. The pose of the infant Christ, eyes closed and limbs stretched out, would have reminded contemporary viewers of a type of picture known as the Lamentation, or pietà, which showed Christ after his death lying across his mother’s knees. And yet the carefully observed landscape in our picture evokes hopefulness: spring is a time of renewal in nature and of Easter, the moment of Christ’s resurrection from the dead.

We don't know who the picture was made for, but there was strong demand in this period for religious pictures that would provoke an intense emotional and spiritual reaction. Bellini achieves this through a landscape setting which is intended to intensify the viewer’s personal engagement with the holy figures: they are present within a recognisable space and therefore seem more immediate.