Madonna with the Child

Giovanni Bellini's Madonna with the Child, painted around 1460 and now in the Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan, is an early work showing the strong influence of his brother-in-law Andrea Mantegna. The hard, linear treatment of the figures and the stone-like quality of the drapery are characteristic of Bellini's Paduan phase. The painting documents the earliest stage of an artistic career that would span over sixty years and fundamentally transform Venetian painting.

The early Madonna displays the sharp contours, angular drapery folds, and firm sculptural modeling of Bellini's Paduan period, with the Mantegnesque hardness that he would gradually soften through his revolutionary exploration of light and atmosphere.