Madonna mit Kind, vier Heiligen und Stifter

This one has never moved. Bellini painted it in 1507 for the Venetian patrician Giacomo Dolfin, who wanted an altarpiece for his family's chapel in the Franciscan church of San Francesco della Vigna, out on the quiet northern edge of the city, and there it still hangs. The Madonna sits with the Christ child among four saints: the Baptist and Francis on one side, Jerome and Sebastian on the other. What was new was the setting. Bellini took these figures out of the usual painted architecture and stood them together in open country under a wide sky, a kind of holy gathering in the landscape. By now he was old, and pupils in his workshop had a hand in some of the saints.