Virgen Contarini

Bellini painted this Madonna in Venice around 1475, at the point when the city's painters were just changing how they worked, moving from tempera toward the oil paint that Netherlandish artists had shown them. Oil let Bellini soften every edge, and you feel it in the gentle light on the Virgin's face and the hazy landscape of hills and a distant towered town behind her. He sets Mary as a half-figure behind a low parapet, the Child standing on the ledge and turning to embrace her. That exact arrangement became almost a signature for him. He would return to it again and again across his long career. Below, on a little cartouche, he has signed his name in Latin, Ioannes Bellinus. The Child's steady, wide-eyed stare still carries something of the old Byzantine icons that Venetian painting grew out of.