Madonna Adoring the Sleeping Christ Child

Giovanni Bellini's Madonna Adoring the Sleeping Christ Child, painted around 1475 and now in the Uffizi, Florence, treats the tender theme of the Virgin contemplating her sleeping son. The motif of the sleeping infant, carrying the sorrowful premonition of Christ's death, was a subject Bellini returned to repeatedly, each time finding new emotional resonance. The painting's acquisition by the Uffizi brought a major Venetian work into Florence's predominantly Tuscan collection.

Bellini's mid-1470s technique shows increasingly warm, blended modeling in the Virgin's face and the infant's soft flesh, with the gentle transitions characteristic of his growing mastery of oil painting medium.