Pietà with Madonna and St. John the Evangelist

Giovanni Bellini's Pietà with Madonna and St. John the Evangelist, painted around 1455 and from the Guglielmo Lochis Collection (now Accademia Carrara, Bergamo), is one of the artist's earliest treatments of the Pietà theme that would become central to his art. The composition of the dead Christ supported by the mourning Virgin and John derives from Byzantine and medieval prototypes that Bellini transformed with new emotional depth. The work shows the formative influence of Mantegna on the young Bellini.

Bellini's early Pietà displays sharp, angular forms and precise contours characteristic of his Paduan phase, with the emotional intensity of the mourning group expressed through taut, sculptural figure modeling.