Madonna with sleeping Child

Mary sits with her palms pressed together in prayer, and the Child sleeps on a cushion along a stone ledge in front of her. Venetians in Bellini's day knew how to read that sleep. A sleeping Christ Child pointed quietly ahead to his death, the infant already laid out like the man who would be taken down from the cross. The museum, which also owns a Madonna by Giovanni Bellini himself, judges this panel of more modest quality and gives it to his workshop. One finding complicates that. Infrared examination has revealed the drawing beneath the paint, and the museum calls that underdrawing very fine, worthy of the master.