Madonna and sleeping child

Andrea Mantegna's Madonna and Sleeping Child, painted around 1457 and now in the Gemäldegalerie, Berlin, depicts the Virgin contemplating her sleeping infant in a tender devotional image. The sleeping Christ Child was understood as prefiguring Christ's death, lending this seemingly peaceful scene a poignant theological undercurrent. Mantegna was in his twenties and newly married to Nicolosia Bellini, Giovanni Bellini's sister, when he painted this intimate work.

Mantegna renders the delicate subject with characteristic precision, using firm contours and careful modeling to give the sleeping child a sculptural solidity, while the Virgin's contemplative expression shows his gift for understated emotional depth.