SACRED CONVERSATION. – A composition in which images of saints are depicted in attitudes and expressions of conversation, either among themselves or with the Virgin and Child.
There are hints of this in the 14th century, but the genre reaches full development in the early decades of the 15th; the animation of the figures and the spontaneity of their affections lead to a participation in real life, due to the irruption of the humanistic conception of life into the new juridical canons of art.
In the Tuscan school of the mid-15th century, the theme of the Sacred Conversation appears for the first time: in an intimate dialogue, the saints Cosmas and Damian, Francis and Lawrence, Anthony and Peter the Martyr are gathered two by two around John the Baptist in a rectangular marble aedicula set against a garden background, in a painting by Filippo Lippi from 1437–58, now in the National Gallery in London. However, this type of Sacred Conversation was not followed by other painters. While in Tuscany the theme either petered out or assumed a different grandeur in complex altarpieces, from the late 15th century onward it was primarily treated by Venetian artists. At first, the composition featured figures arranged at three-quarters height on either side of the Madonna and Child, turned toward the central group, set against a landscape or a secure background. Giovanni Bellini initiated this compositional scheme in his Sacred Conversation of 1502, now in the Galleria of Venice, later taken up in the admirable composition by Lotto from 1508, now in the Borghese Gallery in Rome. Numerous Sacred Conversations set outdoors were produced by Cima da Conegliano.
It was only with Titian, who abolished the centrifugal composition, that the Sacred Conversation resolved into a lively dialogue between the Virgin and the saints, and between saint and saint, with the figures shown at three-quarters length against the backdrop of a wall or a curtain, arranged in two opposing groups. In this way, the center was no longer defined by a dominant group but by the relationships between the various figures, conveyed through the direction of their gazes and gestures. In the Sacred Conversation in Madrid at the Prado, Saint Bridget holds out a basket of roses to the Child, who in turn seems to offer them to the Madonna, while in the Sacred Conversation in Dresden from 1515, Saint John the Baptist actively helps to support the standing Child Jesus, intimately participating in the divine group.
Alongside the Sacred Conversation set in a closed and austere interior, there was a parallel full development of the genre in outdoor settings, pioneered by Palma Vecchio, whose balanced compositions convey a sense of pastoral idyll. In a broad landscape, many saints are seated or kneeling in harmonious disorder around the Virgin and Child, often accompanied by Saint Joseph, as in the work at the Accademia in Venice. Sometimes these Sacred Conversations take their cue from the presentation of one or more donors to the Virgin by the saints, with the donors arranged on a lower plane than the sacred figures. Thus, in Palma Vecchio’s Sacred Conversation in Naples (1523–25), two donors kneel at the foot of the raised platform where Mary and the saints stand, and Saint Jerome and Saint John intercede on their behalf to the Virgin, while the Child looks on attentively.