A Closer Look: Episode 27 - Giovanni Bellini’s San Zaccaria altarpiece
Sacra conversazione is an Italian term used in art history for Renaissance altarpieces of a particular type. These “sacred conversations” are formally composed works, usually showing the seated Virgin and Child surrounded by saints who had a significance for the work’s patron.
Many Italian artists used this composition, but Venice’s Giovanni Bellini is surely one of the most adept at harnessing its compositional and symbolic possibilities. In this episode, Dr Nick Gordon and art historian Dr Louise Marshall discuss one of Bellini’s most-loved works, the San Zaccaria altarpiece in Venice. An early sixteenth-century work that is Bellini’s last documented painting, it can still be admired in the church of San Zaccaria for which it was commissioned.
You can see high-resolution images of the altarpiece, in its architectural setting on Wikimedia Commons.
Dr Louise Marshall
Dr Louise Marshall is an art historian, with a PhD from the University of Pennsylvania and a research specialisation in Italian art of the Middle Ages and Renaissance. She is an honorary senior lecturer in the Department of Art History at the University of Sydney, where she taught for over thirty years.
Dr Nick Gordon
Nick is a historian of Italy and of Western Europe in the Middle Ages and Early Modern period. He has led tours to Italy, France, Germany, Scandinavia, East Asia and Australasia for more than fifteen years. Nick is a director of Limelight Arts Travel.