BRERA, Raffaello - The Marriage Of The Virgin

You'll find the painting The Marriage of the Virgin to the left of Piero della Francesca's altarpiece. You may not believe it, but this masterpiece was painted by an artist who had just turned twenty-one: his name was Raffaello Sanzio, and he was a great painter and architect from the Marche region who lived at the end of the 15th and beginning of the 16th centuries.

The scene depicts the moment when Joseph places the wedding ring on Mary's finger, and we can see a large temple in the background before a gentle, hilly landscape. With a touching expression of shyness, Mary holds out her hand to receive the wedding ring offered by Joseph, while the high priest marries the young couple.

More important than the wedding scene, the real protagonist of the composition is the temple, which as you can see is exactly in the middle of a space in perspective: the figures are naturally laid out in a series of semicircles which take the shape of the dome and the painting itself. The double door open at the temple's center is a stroke of genius, and lets you see through the building all the way to the bright horizon....