Madonnas on a gold background, heirs to Byzantine icons and international Gothic.
Then, suddenly, behind them, still surrounding them but inscribing them in our world, the sky.
This is perhaps the most immediately remarkable contribution of painters at the dawn of the Renaissance.
And particularly of those who breathed the Mediterranean azure and lived at the height of the waves in the scintillation of the Adriatic.
This sky everywhere on the Lagoon is, in their compositions, of a lighter and deeper blue than the precious lapis lazuli coming from the Afghan mountains and with which the dress of the Virgin is still seen traditionally adorned.
At their head in the Serenissima at the end of the 15th century, Giovanni Bellini (around 1435-1516).
In Paris, the Jacquemart-André Museum pays tribute to this artist for the first time exhibited centrally in France.
With some twenty-five of his works partly or totally autograph, as many others demonstrate why, through the many influences…
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