La Lamentation : le corps du Christ soutenu par Marie et saint Jean / Pietà

Bellini returned to this composition more often than to any other, and at least 19 versions of it are known. The Berlin picture is reckoned the best of them. Half-length groups like this were made for private houses in Venice, small enough for a room and meant for prayer at close range, and the museum points out the device that does the work. St John looks straight out at you, in tears, so that you are standing inside the scene rather than in front of it. It is painted on poplar wood and it has had a hard life, with the faces of Christ and of Mary largely repainted. It came to Berlin in 1821, when the Prussian state bought up the collection of Edward Solly, an English timber merchant living in the city, about 3,000 pictures that became the core of the gallery.