God the Father

Giovanni Ambrogio Bevilacqua's God the Father, painted around 1496 and now at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, depicts the first person of the Christian Trinity — the Creator, Ancient of Days, sovereign ruler of the universe — as an aged, majestic figure enthroned in glory, a subject that required painters to give visual form to the ultimately formless divine. Bevilacqua was a Lombard painter active in Milan in the 1490s, working in the orbit of Foppa and the early Lombard Renaissance, and absorbing the first influence of Leonardo da Vinci who had arrived in Milan around 1482.

Tempera and oil on panel reflecting the Lombard technique of the 1490s with beginning sfumato modelling. God the Father is shown in conventional format: frontal and majestic, bearded and aged, in a mandorla with the orb of the world or arms raised in blessing.