Holy Allegory [SEP] creator
Holy Allegory
The Holy Allegory is a painting by the Italian Renaissance master Giovanni Bellini, dating from c. 1490 to 1500. It is in the Uffizi gallery in Florence, Italy.
History.
There is no documentation about the commission and the original location of the work, which is known to have been part of the Austrian Imperial collections in Vienna in the 18th century. In 1793 the director of the Uffizi, Luigi Lanzi, exchanged it with another work in order to improve the Venetian Renaissance presence in the museum
to as "Chaled", from the weasel (chulda), because the weasel is the only animal on dry land that does not have its counterpart in the sea.
All of Creation was considered to reflect the Creator, and Man could learn about the Creator through studying the Creation, an assumption that underlies the "watchmaker analogy" offered as a proof of God's existence.
The correspondence between the realms of earth and sea, extending to its denizens, offers examples of the taste for allegory engendered by Christian