Virgen con el Niño entre san Juan Bautista y un santo

By about 1500 Giovanni Bellini had been the leading painter of Venice for a generation, and old age had not dulled his curiosity about landscape. In this quiet grouping the Virgin holds the Christ Child between Saint John the Baptist, known by his beard and reed cross, and a second saint whose name is now lost. What holds the eye is behind them: a walled town, farmhouses, a shepherd with his flock, and distant mountains washed in blue where the air thickens. Bellini had spent decades learning to paint that haze, the way things pale and soften as they recede. The panel later belonged to the Venetian prince Giovanelli, whose name it still carries, before it came to the Accademia a short walk from where Bellini worked.