Madonna and Child with Saints John the Baptist and Elizabeth

Around 1495, Giovanni Bellini ran the busiest painting workshop in Venice, and pictures like this one were its bread and butter. Wealthy families wanted a Madonna for private prayer at home, and the workshop supplied them by recombining figures it had already perfected into a fresh arrangement each time. That practical habit left a small oddity here. Elizabeth and the young John the Baptist have come to adore the Christ Child, yet from where they kneel they can only see Mary's back. The figures were designed separately and never quite turned to meet. What still stops you is the colour. The deep blue of Mary's robe is ground from lapis lazuli, a stone then worth its weight in gold, carried to Venice along the same trade routes that made the city rich. The panel is poplar, and it has hung in Frankfurt since 1833.