Madonna and Child

Jacopo Bellini's Madonna and Child, painted around 1450 and now in the Uffizi, Florence, is by the patriarch of Venice's most important artistic dynasty. Father of Giovanni and Gentile Bellini and father-in-law of Andrea Mantegna, Jacopo was the transitional figure who brought the International Gothic style of Gentile da Fabriano into contact with the emerging Renaissance. His two surviving sketchbooks (in the Louvre and British Museum) are among the most important documents of 15th-century Italian art.

Jacopo's Madonna demonstrates his transitional style between late Gothic elegance and early Renaissance naturalism, with soft, decorative elements alongside emerging spatial awareness and volumetric figure modeling.