Vierge à l'Enfant

Bellini painted this Madonna and Child around 1475, in his full maturity, when he was remaking Venetian art around soft light and slow, tender feeling rather than hard Florentine line. For centuries it hung in a side chapel of the church of the Madonna dell'Orto in Venice. Then, on 1 March 1993, it was cut out and stolen in the night, and it has never been recovered. Today the altar holds a photograph of the painting where the panel used to be, and the empty frame beside it carries a note about the theft. So the work is known now mostly from reproductions, the mother's lowered eyes, the grave child held close, and the quiet gold behind them that Bellini was already learning to replace with real Venetian light.