Sacra Conversazione

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Virgin and Child Enthroned with Saints "Sacra Conversazione" (1480), tempera on panel.

Madonna in trono con il Bambino tra i ss. Anna, Gioacchino, Ludovico da Tolosa, Antonio da Padova, Francesco e Bernardino da Siena di Alvise Vivarini

Sacra Conversazione is a genre developed in Italian Renaissance painting. It comes from the Italian, and it means "holy conversation"; in such paintings, attendant saints are grouped in a unified space around the centralized Virgin and Child, in a single scene. In 15th-century works the saints are only rarely engaged in actual conversation; they are frequently meditating or reading. Often one looks out at the viewer, while another gestures towards the Virgin and Child directing the viewer's attention to their presence as the focal point of the altarpiece.

You can see this painting at the Gallerie dell'Accademia, a museum gallery of pre-19th-century art in Venice, northern Italy. It is housed in the Scuola della Carità on the south bank of the Grand Canal, within the sestiere of Dorsoduro. It was originally the gallery of the Accademia di Belle Arti di Venezia, the art academy of Venice, from which it became independent in 1879, and for which the Ponte dell'Accademia and the Accademia boat landing station for the vaporetto water bus are named. The two institutions remained in the same building until 2004, when the art school moved to the Ospedale degli Incurabili.

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