Giovanni Bellini's Madonna of the Meadow interpreted in accordance with the Imitation of Christ

What is it about?

I first examine pictorial structure to identify Bellini’s distinctive approach that presents holy figures at the foreground of a landscape but subtly sets them apart from its distant views. In the case of the Madonna of the Meadow, this formula evokes the notion of Christ existing “in the world but not of it” (Jn 17:16) as he lies upon his mother’s lap. Bellini refers to multiple Madonna types and creates an evocative figural group that stimulates a variety of meditational devotions which, in turn, also resonate with spiritualized readings of the landscape beyond. Then, I collate extracts from Thomas à Kempis’ Imitation of Christ with potential visual excursions prompted by Bellini’s imagery in order to demonstrate how well the visual and textual approaches correlate. The Madonna embodies the treatise’s central virtue, humility or meekness, and its desired spiritual mood of inward contemplation of Christ. Within the landscape, Bellini provides details presented in non-linear distribution which recall a compendium of ideas gleaned from hymns, the Mass ceremony, biblical readings, and the Imitation of Christ. These multivalent references impact spiritualized re-reading of principal figures and incidental details. This approach parallels the Imitation of Christ’s non-linear sequence of meditations on related topics in a progression that, as in life, encounters similar themes repeatedly for renewed reflection as a means to spiritual growth.

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Why is it important?

I also scrutinize two devotional treatises that have been suggested as sources for Bellini, the Giardino de Oratione fructuoso (1494) and the Monte del Oratione (1493). They introduce intriguing thematic similarities but I show how they differ in terms of literary imagery and linear progression through an imagined landscape toward a single devotional goal. However, with regard to the Imitation of Christ, standing in Christ constitutes the goal attainable in life, just as Bellini presents the infant Christ in foreground for viewers' contemplation; with that accomplished, both image and text present temporal issues that prompt varying reflections on life’s vicissitudes and moral lessons they impart, while retaining a distant view of the goal which believers hope to gain in the afterlife. Giovanni Bellini, of course, did not illustrate passages from the Imitation of Christ in his Madonna of the Meadow, but affinities between image and text in theme, structure, and spirituality imply that the artist was familiar with the devotional approach that the Imitation of Christ promoted.

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