Pietà

Bellini was an old man when he painted this, in his seventies and the most honoured artist in Venice, yet still watching the young. It was his last treatment of the dead Christ mourned by his mother, made about the same time as his great San Zaccaria altarpiece, and you can see him taking in the softer light and warmth of the newcomers Giorgione and Titian. Mary holds her son's body on a low bank of grass, an enclosed lawn that stands for her purity. Behind stretches a bare landscape with a single fig tree, and along the horizon Bellini set real towns, recognisable buildings from Vicenza, Ravenna and Cividale, gathering the actual world of northern Italy behind the grief.