La Vierge de la prairie

Bellini painted this in Venice around 1500, and he was among the first Italian painters to give a landscape as much care as the holy figures set in front of it. The Virgin sits low on the bare ground, in the old pose of humility, the sleeping Child heavy across her knees in a way that already looks like a body laid out for burial. Behind her the plain of the Veneto opens up in the pale light of a cold morning. There is a walled town, a herder with his oxen, bare winter trees, and a heron standing in a field. All of it is ordinary country life, and Bellini uses it to fold this quiet mother and child into a real place, a real season. The panel was moved onto canvas in 1949, which is why the surface shows its age in places.