Tríptico dos Frari

Most Renaissance altarpieces long ago left the churches they were painted for. This one never did. Bellini finished it in 1488 for the sacristy of the great Franciscan church of the Frari in Venice, and it still stands there in the carved and gilded frame made for it. He designed that frame himself and then continued it into the painting: the fictive painted pilasters behind the enthroned Madonna carry the very same capitals as the real wooden ones around the panels, so the Virgin seems to sit in a golden apse that opens straight out of the sacristy wall. A carpenter's inscription on the back records the day it was raised above the altar, 15 February 1489.