The remote pictorial touch, the delicate palette, are typical Pittoni characteristics. The work is the detail of the great painting that can be found in the National Gallery in London titled «The Nativity with God the Father and the Holy Spirit». The painting could be a cover created for sale by Pittoni or a preparatory sketch (The Croquis) for the altarpiece as for the similar work from Berlin.
«The Nativity with God the Father and the Holy Spirit», from the National Gallery in London.
Interpretation
The closed eyes that look down, for the time, a unique and rare representation of the Madonna, which is also repeated in the Pittoni The Nativity with God the Father and the Holy Ghost of the London National Gallery museum.
It is possible that Pittoni looks for further mystical strength in it, exasperating the interpretation of the critic Alexander Nagel on Leonardo da Vinci's "Head of a Woman" in which "the eyes do not focus on any outward object, and they give the impression that they will remain where they are: they see through the filter of an inner state, rather than receive immediate impressions from the outside world. It is the attitude of being suspended in a state of mind beyond specific thought—unaware, even, of its own body...here an inner life is suggested by a new order of pictorial effects, without recourse to action or narrative."[3]
