Madonna and Child

Almost nothing of Jacopo Bellini's painting has come down to us. He was the leading painter of Venice in the middle of the 15th century, and what survives is mostly drawings, which makes a panel like this one unusually valuable as evidence. Its date comes from an inscription in Gothic letters along the frame, a line of Latin reading 1448, Bellini gave these figures with a noble mind. Scholars accept the wording as his, but the lettering has been repainted and the strip was probably moved here from another part of whatever larger structure the panel once belonged to, so the year is a strong indication rather than a certainty. The picture came to the Brera in 1912 from the church of the Visitation at Casalfiumanese, a village in the hills south of Imola. It was badly damaged by then, and a heavy restoration in 1913 repainted a great deal of it, including the inscription that carries the date.