Dead Christ Supported by Two Angels

This is an image meant for private prayer rather than an altar: a half-length dead Christ, eyes closed, held upright by two small angels who are themselves close to weeping. Venetians called this type the Imago Pietatis, the image of pity, and it came to them from Byzantine icons, which still arrived steadily in the trading city when Giovanni Bellini painted it early in his career, around 1470. What he added was Italian. Christ's body has the broad shoulders and calm proportions of a classical statue, and the grey of his lips and the shadowed eyes are described with a tenderness meant to hold the viewer in front of it, thinking on the suffering. The two child angels can barely hold his weight.