The descent of Christ into limbo

Giovanni Bellini's The Descent of Christ into Limbo of around 1450, one of his earliest documented works, depicts the harrowing of hell in which the risen Christ descends to the underworld to release the righteous souls who had awaited his redemption. The subject — one of the most dramatic in Christian narrative — allowed the young Bellini to engage with the figure subjects and narrative structure that would define his mature career, his treatment already showing the formal clarity and emotional directness that would develop into a lifelong signature.

The early date is reflected in a relatively stiff, archaic handling compared to Bellini's mature works. The composition shows the influence of Jacopo Bellini's drawing books, with the dramatic subject treated in the linear, sculptural manner of early Venetian Renaissance painting.