Vierge à l'Enfant sur un trône

Giovanni Bellini's Virgin and Child Enthroned of around 1510, a late sacra conversazione, demonstrates the atmospheric luminosity and landscape integration that defined his final period's contribution to Venetian sacred painting. The throne set within a landscape — the Virgin's physical presence within the created world rather than abstracted from it — made a theological statement about incarnation that Bellini had been developing across decades of Madonnas. The late works' atmospheric freedom influenced Giorgione and Titian's subsequent development.

Bellini's extreme late technique reaches maximum atmospheric warmth, with the figures bathed in golden light that softens all contours and creates a mood of profound serenity. The handling is remarkably free for the period, anticipating the fully painterly manner of the next generation of Venetian painters.