U.S. transfer for Rimini’s Bellini. In fact, from January 15 to April 19, 2026, Giovanni Bellini ’s Pietà preserved at the Museo della Città di Rimini will be exhibited for the first time in the United States: the exhibition will be held at the Morgan Library & Museum in New York. The work, created around 1470, is one of the pinnacles of the Venetian master’s early production and arrives overseas after a restoration promoted and financed by Venetian Heritage, Inc.: a conservative intervention that was able to restore all its chromatic and spiritual depth. The exhibition is part of the Morgan’s policy of presenting absolute masterpieces of European art history to the American public in dialogue with works from its permanent collection.
The Pieta will be installed in the personal studio of J. Pierpont Morgan, the historic heart of the museum, alongside some of the finest examples of Renaissance art in the collection: paintings by Hans Memling and Perugino, sculptures by Antonio Rossellino, and precious objects of sacred art.
In Giovanni Bellini’s Pietà, the figure of the dead Christ, reclining and fragile, is supported by four angels who contemplate the body’s wounds with gentleness and composure. This is not a cry of pain, but a scene of silent meditation. The angels, absorbed and restrained, seem to care for Christ’s body, arranging it for veneration. Bellini constructs an image of intense spirituality, in which suffering is translated into a calm awareness of the divine mystery. The composure of the gestures and the clarity of the Venetian color bring to life a feeling of universal but serene sorrow, far from the emotional excesses that characterized other depictions of the theme.
The painting, executed on panel with tempera and oil, belongs to the phase in which Bellini, trained in his father’s workshop and in dialogue with his brother-in-law Andrea Mantegna, developed a style capable of fusing the lesson of Paduan drawing with the chromatic softness of the Venetian tradition. In his small devotional panels, such as the Rimini Pietà, Bellini renews the traditional language of the icon: he definitively abandons Byzantine frontality and rigidity to introduce a more human and participatory feeling. Attention to sculptural forms, learned from ancient and contemporary models, is combined with a refined use of color and light, capable of creating a dimension suspended between corporeity and transcendence. The result is an image that combines modernity and eternity: Christ, though dead, seems to live in the silence that surrounds him, in a perfect balance between reality and symbol.
The recent restoration, sponsored by Venetian Heritage, has made it possible to recover the original legibility of the work, compromised by centuries of oxidation and repainting. The interventions have revealed the richness of Bellini’s palette: intense blues, complexions of pearly transparency, and lacquered reds that precisely define spatial depth. Venetian Heritage, an international nonprofit organization dedicated to safeguarding Venice’s artistic heritage around the world, made possible not only the restoration but also the work’s trip to the United States.
Moreover, the exhibition will coincide with another major exhibition hosted by the Morgan: Caravaggio’s Boy with a Basket of Fruit in Focus. This coincidence will thus offer visitors an opportunity to compare two founding moments in Italian painting, separated by more than a century but united by a common desire to represent the humanity of the sacred. The exhibition will be accompanied by a program of meetings and lectures that will explore the figure of Bellini and the meaning of the Pieta in the context of his time. Details of the side activities will be announced soon by the museum.
“The Morgan Library & Museum is delighted not only to bring Bellini’s painting to the United States for the first time, but also to unveil this masterpiece to the public after its highly anticipated restoration, and for this we are deeply grateful to Venetian Heritage,” said Colin B. Bailey, director of the Morgan Library. “Our presentation will allow visitors to the Morgan Library & Museum to see how Bellini was inspired by the iconic Byzantine tradition of painting the dead Christ and breathed new life into this devotional subject, combining a sense of deep spiritual emotion with a new humanistic classicism.”
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| U.S. transfer for Giovanni Bellini's Pieta from Rimini City Museum |
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