Dead Christ Supported by Two Angels

This is one of the young Giovanni Bellini's first attempts at a subject he would carry for the rest of his life: the dead Christ held up close and human for us to see. He paints it around 1460, setting two small angels to prop the body upright, their child faces grave with a grief they seem far too young to carry. Much of the feeling comes by way of his brother-in-law Andrea Mantegna, whose hard sculptural line Bellini warms and softens into flesh. One caution for anyone reading the panel closely. The date carved into the edge of the tomb and the small monogram of the German painter Albrecht Durer were both added by a later hand, and neither belongs to Bellini.