Sacred Conversation. In art, a sacra conversazione, meaning holy conversation, is a genre developed in Italian Renaissance painting, with a depiction of the Virgin and Child amidst a group of saints in a relatively informal grouping, as opposed to the more rigid and hierarchical compositions of earlier periods.
Donor portraits may also be included, generally kneeling, often their patron saint is presenting them to the Virgin, and angels are frequently in attendance. The term is often used as a title for paintings to avoid listing all the individual figures, although the trend in museums and academic art history is now to give the full list.
The name, which only appears as a title retrospectively in the 18th century, has been explained with reference to their rapt stillness of mood, in which the Saints, scarcely looking at one another, seem to communicate at a spiritual rather than a material level. At least that is the case in earlier examples; later ones, from the 16th century onwards, often give the impression of more conventional conversations between the figures, who lean towards one another and interact more.
In Italian the term is perhaps used more often and more widely than is usually the case in English, for example covering in aria compositions in the tradition of Raphael's Sistine Madonna where the Virgin and Child hover in the air well above the saints. The sacra conversazione developed
Donor portraits may also be included, generally kneeling, often their patron saint is presenting them to the Virgin, and angels are frequently in attendance. The term is often used as a title for paintings to avoid listing all the individual figures, although the trend in museums and academic art history is now to give the full list.
The name, which only appears as a title retrospectively in the 18th century, has been explained with reference to their rapt stillness of mood, in which the Saints, scarcely looking at one another, seem to communicate at a spiritual rather than a material level. At least that is the case in earlier examples; later ones, from the 16th century onwards, often give the impression of more conventional conversations between the figures, who lean towards one another and interact more.
In Italian the term is perhaps used more often and more widely than is usually the case in English, for example covering in aria compositions in the tradition of Raphael's Sistine Madonna where the Virgin and Child hover in the air well above the saints. The sacra conversazione developed
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