Retablo de San Zacarías

Bellini signed and dated this altarpiece 1505, when he was already an old man and the leading painter of Venice. It still hangs in the church it was made for, San Zaccaria, and part of its power is that the painted architecture seems to continue the real stone of the chapel around it, so the Madonna and her saints feel like they are standing in a niche in the wall itself. An angel sits on the step below the throne playing a viol, and the whole scene is held in that soft, even light Bellini was famous for. The panel did leave once. When Napoleon's armies took Venice in 1797 it was cut down, rolled up and carried off to Paris, where it stayed for about 20 years before being returned after his fall and set back in its original frame, where you see it today.