Presentation of Jesus

This panel was not always an oval. It was cut to that shape in the 18th century, and its travels explain how a Bellini could be treated so freely. In 1636 it belonged to Bartolomeo della Nave, a Venetian merchant with one of the finest picture collections in the city. Two years later his paintings were bought for the Marquis of Hamilton, a Scottish courtier of Charles I, and shipped to London. After Hamilton was executed in 1649 his pictures were sold, and much of the della Nave collection passed to Archduke Leopold Wilhelm and so to Vienna. This one was sent on to Pressburg, today Bratislava, in 1765, and was back in the imperial gallery by 1783. Bellini painted it around 1490 to 1500, a half-length scene of the Christ Child brought to the old priest Simeon, lit with the soft light and paired colours that Venetian painting would build on.