Sacra conversazione

Six saints stand around the Virgin's throne, and not one of them ever met another. Louis of Toulouse died in 1297, Bernardino of Siena in 1444, and the rest belong to still other centuries. A Venetian altarpiece like this gathers them into one silent room anyway, arranged three to a side, the Child standing upright on Mary's knee. Vivarini signed and dated it 1480 for the church of San Francesco in Treviso. Look behind the figures and you find a plain green cloth. X-rays have shown it was not part of the first design. The original background was painted over later, and the green hanging that now closes the scene, in the manner Giovanni Bellini had made fashionable in Venice, is a second thought added afterwards.