The Virgin and Child

Paintings like this show why Bellini’s workshop emerged as the principal supplier of devotional paintings in Renaissance Venice. A thoughtful Virgin
Mary, dressed in a fine robe of velvet brocade shot through with gold thread, holds up her son for our veneration. Presented as if very close to us, both figures are bathed in a subtle light. The sense that we might touch them is encouraged by Bellini’s depiction of the Christ Child lightly pinching his mother’s finger.