La Vierge à l'Enfant entre deux saints

Around 1490, Giovanni Bellini was the leading painter in Venice, and this is the kind of quiet devotional picture his workshop turned out for private prayer. It belongs to a type the Italians call a sacra conversazione, a sacred conversation, though no one speaks. The Virgin holds the Christ Child while two women stand close in the dark, sharing the same hushed space. On one side is Mary Magdalene. On the other, most likely Saint Ursula, holding the arrow that killed her. Along the front runs a painted marble ledge carrying Bellini's signature, less a boast that his own hand did every inch than a mark that the piece met his studio's standard.