Room 63

The luminous landscape in Giovanni Bellini’s The Agony in the Garden carries a religious story into a world of changing light. A portrait such as Doge Leonardo Loredan offers another use of close observation, with a carefully described face and ceremonial clothing. Venice was a centre of Mediterranean trade whose painters also exchanged ideas with artists from other regions. Antonello da Messina brought experience of northern portraiture, while Albrecht Dürer visited from Germany. His small Saint Jerome is among the works shown here. Compare the edges of a face with the distance in a landscape, and notice how colour and light serve both subjects.