Retable de Pesaro

This large Coronation of the Virgin is one of Giovanni Bellini's first great altarpieces, painted for a church in the Adriatic town of Pesaro around 1471. Christ crowns his mother as they sit together on a broad marble throne, saints standing to either side. Bellini did something quietly new with that throne. Its high back is cut through like an open window, and instead of gold behind the holy figures there is a real landscape, rolling hills and a hilltop castle that people have matched to the fortress at nearby Gradara. The clear light and firm geometry show how closely Bellini had been studying Piero della Francesca, who had worked in the region. The picture stayed in Pesaro, where it still hangs today, its side panels and predella now shown around it.