Madonna and Child with Concert of Angels

Around 1500, while the lagoon below was full of Bellini and Carpaccio, this small panel was painted for Friuli, the alpine country to the northeast of Venice. Its maker, Gianfrancesco da Tolmezzo, was the leading painter of that region and effectively founded a local school in the valley town he is named for. His Madonna sits with the Child while small angels make music at her feet, an old devotional formula kept alive far from the great city workshops. The tempera handling and the plain manner belong to an earlier world than the oil paint Venice had already taken up. The Accademia acquired the little picture in 1906, the gift of the Venetian sculptor Antonio Dal Zotto.