Frizzoni Madonna

Giovanni Bellini's Frizzoni Madonna, painted around 1470 and now in the Museo Correr, Venice, takes its name from the collector Gustavo Frizzoni. The work represents Bellini's transitional period in the early 1470s, when his style was shifting from Paduan hardness to Venetian warmth. Bellini's Madonna paintings chart the evolution of Venetian art itself, from the linear precision of the Paduan tradition to the atmospheric luminosity that became the Venetian school's defining achievement.

The painting shows Bellini in his transitional phase, with the firm contours of his early style beginning to soften under the influence of Antonello da Messina's oil technique, producing warmer, more blended flesh tones.