Sacred conversation

In art, a sacra conversazione, (plural: sacre conversazioni) meaning holy/sacred conversation, but normally left in Italian, is a genre developed in Italian Renaissance painting, with a depiction of the Virgin and Child (the Virgin Mary with the infant Jesus) amidst a group of saints in a relatively informal grouping, as opposed to the more rigid and hierarchical compositions of earlier periods.Donor portraits may also be included, generally kneeling, often their patron saint is presenting them to the Virgin, and angels are frequently in attendance.

The term is often used as a title for paintings to avoid listing all the individual figures, although the trend in museums and academic art history is now to give the full list. The name, which only appears as a title retrospectively in the 18th century, has been explained with reference to "their rapt stillness of mood, in which the Saints, scarcely looking at one another, seem to communicate at a spiritual rather than a material level". At least that is the case in earlier examples; later ones, from the 16th century onwards, often give the impression of more conventional conversations between the figures, who lean towards one another and interact more. In Italian the term is perhaps used more often and more widely than is usually the case in English, for example covering in aria compositions in the tradition of Raphael's Sistine Madonna where the Virgin and Child hover in the air well above the saints.

The sacra conversazione developed as artists replaced earlier hieratic and compartmented triptych or polyptych formats for altarpieces with compositions in which figures interacted within a unified perspectival space. While traditional altarpieces generally retained a vertical format, the sacra conversazione had all the principal figures on a single level, or nearly so. They therefore tended to move towards a horizontal format, as there was little but angels and architecture to put at the top of a vertical one, unless the divine figures were raised on a very high throne, as in the unusual composition of the Castelfranco Madonna (Giorgione, c. 1503). Here as in many works, the Virgin and Child are seated on a throne, but the saints stand, so in more typical examples with the throne only slightly raised on a dais, the adult heads are at about the same level. The sacra conversazione was one of the types of image that led to the horizontal format becoming common in paintings; before the Renaissance it was relatively rare in easel paintings. Often such works, especially if in a horizontal format and at half-length or with seated figures, were painted for the homes of wealthy collectors, whether for a private chapel or to be hung in other rooms, treated not unlike portraits or secular scenes.

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