In Renaissance Venice, placing the Virgin and infant Jesus anywhere except the exact center of a painting was heresy, akin to suggesting, as Copernicus did, that the earth revolved around the sun and not, as the pope insisted, vice versa. Contemporary Venetians would have regarded such impiety an assault on public virtue, every bit as outrageous and indefensible—not to mention far more dangerous—than hauling a half ton of dirt up four flights of stairs, dumping it on the floor of a decaying warehouse and calling it art. Renaissance painting and architecture were both designed to make the
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