《圣母加冕》多联画

Paolo Veneziano is usually called the founder of Venetian painting, the first named artist to give the city a manner of its own: gold grounds and Byzantine solemnity warmed by a new softness. This towering polyptych came from the convent of the Poor Clares of Santa Chiara in Venice, more than 20 small narrative panels framing the Coronation of the Virgin at its centre. Then Napoleon's suppression of the monasteries, in the early 19th century, broke it apart. Most of the work went to the Accademia in 1812, but the central Coronation panel was sent to the Brera in Milan. The two halves stayed separated for well over a hundred years. They were finally reunited here in 1950.