Lamentation of Christ

This is one of the stranger things among the Uffizi's Bellini holdings, a Lamentation worked almost entirely in shades of grey and brown, with none of the deep colour he was famous for. The Virgin and John the Evangelist sit on the ground and take the weight of Christ's body, just lowered from the cross, other mourners gathered close around them. Because it is built up in this near-monochrome, it reads like a large preparatory study, and scholars still argue whether it was left unfinished or made this way on purpose, perhaps with help from Bellini's busy Venice workshop. The bare tones throw all the attention onto the drawing, onto how the figures lean and grieve rather than onto any glow of Venetian colour.