Madonna and Child in a Landscape – (Giovanni Bellini) ◄ Previous Next ►

Artist: Giovanni Bellini

Date: 1485

Size: 115 x 98 cm

Technique: Oil On Panel

Shown from the waist up behind a stone ledge, a young woman nestles a nude baby against her chest in this vertical painting. Both have pale skin with a slight, rosy blush on their cheeks, and both have halos painted as delicate gold rings around their heads. The woman’s shoulders are angled to our left, and she looks down at the baby in that direction with hooded eyes. She has a slender face, a long, straight nose, smooth cheeks, and her pale pink lips are closed. The neckline and the cuffs of her garnet-red, gold-edged gown peek out from beneath a dark, spruce-blue mantle that covers her head and wraps around her body. She rests the baby along the stone ledge and holds him in the crook of her right elbow, to our left. In her other hand, she holds a small object, perhaps an apple. The baby also touches the fruit as he lies back along her arm. He has curly, ash-blond hair, a petite nose, and chubby cheeks. He looks up at the woman or beyond her with parted, downturned lips. The pair are warmly lit from the upper left and set against a fern and olive-green landscape. Near the left edge of the painting, a church and steeple are silhouetted along the horizon, which comes just under halfway up the composition. In the sky above, a clear, pale blue horizon gives way first to puffy, cream-white clouds and then swirling clouds in tones of pine green and slate gray along the top of the picture. An inscription appears on the lower center of the ledge, “IDEM Z.B.”