c. 1460, 81*127cm
It is here that Bellini's greatest gift is displayed, his sense
of light in all its specificity. But Bellini shows us a real city
faintly glimmering into visibility beneath the gentle skies
of early morning. Light is beginning to flood with its warmth the cold night where Jesus has laboured in painful prayer. The mature Bellini understood light with mystical fervour. It had a sacred significance for him, one that he could
share with us without ever lapsing into the explicit. Bellini
is an extraordinary artist, a man sensitive to beauty, aware
of the significance of form, and inspired by a passionate love, both of the visible and the invisible, that makes his work moving on every level. There is no Bellini painting that
we cannot respond to with joy and a deeper understanding
of what our existence is all about.
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