Cristo Abençoando

Bellini made this small panel in Venice around 1500, when he was already an old man and the leading painter in the city. Christ stands close to us, one hand raised in blessing, holding a slender red staff, the marks of the crucifixion still in his hands. What makes it Bellini is the landscape behind him, painted in the cool pink light of very early morning. That dawn is the point. It stands for the resurrection, the new day of the faith, and he fills the setting with quiet signs of it: a bare dead tree beside a living one, a pair of rabbits for new life, and in the distance the three Marys walking toward the empty tomb. The panel is worked up in tempera and oil with gold, and stands only about 60 centimetres tall.