Giovanni Bellini, 'The Virgin and Child', probably 1480-1500

Small panels showing the Virgin and Child were common in Byzantine art, and were thought to derive from an image painted from life by Saint Luke. During the 1470s and 1480s Bellini produced a series of small-scale images of the Virgin and Child, destined for the homes of his Venetian patrons who used them as aids to their private prayer. Bellini’s versions drew upon the traditional iconography of Byzantine art – in plentiful supply in Venice, which had long-standing trade links with Byzantium – but he introduced a range of different poses and settings.

The painting is covered with an old varnish, probably dating from the nineteenth century, which has now discoloured, giving the whole picture a brown tone. The Virgin seems very young and, clasping his head gently, she looks at Christ with a sorrowful gaze. The naked baby lies on a marble parapet, a common feature of Bellini’s images of the Virgin and Child, and also popular in portraits at this time. This one is slightly unusual as it has two sides, enclosing the Virgin’s figure.

Like another Virgin and Child by Bellini in our collection, infrared reflectography has shown drawing that closely resembles the artist’s style, and also several changes to the original design (called pentimenti); Bellini was working out the best image as he drew directly onto the panel. Christ’s hair, for example, was drawn curly but painted straight, and the position of the fingers and arms was altered during the drawing process. There was a canopy over the figures' heads in the original design which was never painted. X-ray imagery shows that the red curtain at the left edge of the panel was painted over a landscape very early during the painting. Photomicrographs – very highly magnified images – show Bellini’s fingerprints in the Virgin’s cheek and Christ’s fingers from where he blotted areas of paint by hand, a technique he used in several other works.

The placement of Christ’s naked body on the marble ledge is probably intended to recall his dead body in his tomb – a reminder that, according to Christians, through his death in adulthood he redeemed humanity. This detail transforms the picture from a tender image of a mother and child to a religious one.