The Christ Child lies sleeping in the Virgin's lap, while she looks down at him with her hands arched in prayer. Behind them unfolds a coolly-lit and delicately ordered contemporary, sixteenth-century Italian landscape. A hill-top town perches in the background while before it are laid out neatly demarcated fields populated with a few men, animals and birds. The wooden structure to the right is a well. Bellini excelled at forging discreet symbolic connections between his figures and their settings. The carrion bird, sitting in a dead tree in the left corner, alludes to death. So too does the season of the year: it is a bright, chill autumn day. The leaves on the trees are golden; nature has come to end of her annual cycle. The Christ Child's pose also anticipates his own death. In this way Mary’s calm, meditative expression could be seen as dimly presentient of her son's destiny. To her left, however, a white bird attacks a rearing snake. This may well refer to Christ's eventual victory over Satan and death. These links between figures and landscape are reinforced by the design. Blue triangular mountains in the distance mimic the shape of the Virgin's cloak. Hers and Christ's flesh-tones are repeated in the architecture.
More generally it may be said that Bellini loved to create bonds of sympathy between the human, natural and the divine. Mary has no halo: this is a radical departure from tradition. Look instead at the way the clouds interact with the fine details of her headdress: to the left grey clouds come up against white drapery, neatly reversed to the right. Thus Mary’s head is fixed within the composition with unobtrusive, natural symmetry. In fact, the painting’s whole arrangement suggests the idea that nature carries within herself the message of divine grace.
When I was studying this painting for a university dissertation I used to spend long hours sitting in front of it at the National Gallery. On a few occasions, I fell asleep and a couple of times was woken up by the guard in the room tapping me gently on the shoulder. He too had a natural sympathy.
