Sacred conversation

By about 1507 Giovanni Bellini was the grand old man of Venetian painting, in his seventies and still running the busiest workshop in the city. Small panels like this were made for private prayer at home, and there was steady demand for them. The type even had a name, the sacra conversazione, a holy conversation, meaning saints gathered quietly around the Virgin and Child in one shared space rather than in separate compartments. Bellini's real gift was light, a soft even glow that settles over faces and distant hills alike and gives the scene its hush. The old man pressing close is Simeon, who in the gospel took the infant Christ in the temple and said that now he could die in peace.