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The altarpiece is set in a large semi-circular niche, known as an apse, and depicts in a pyramidal (triangular) composition of the Virgin and Child enthroned, surrounded by four saints and an angel. The dome with mosaics on the top of the altarpiece create a sense of depth in the room and an addition of space behind the throne and subjects.Giovanni Bellini was repeatedly commissioned to paint the subject of the Virgin and Child because of its religious popularity during this century in Italy, especially in Venice. Most of these devotional paintings, while exhibiting variations in their iconographic details, show a deep influence of Byzantine art and stylistic principles. In this manner, the San Zaccaria Altarpiece was made in relation to the two other Venetian altarpieces by Giovanni Bellini, including the San Giobbe Altarpiece (1487) and the Frari Triptych (1488). There are two common stylistics denominator among these three altarpieces by Bellini: first, is the inclusion of the mosaic apse, and thereby serves as a visual link to the mosaics located in the apse and domes of St. Mark's Basilica in Venice. The second common element is that the enthroned Virgin and Child is an allusion to the Byzantine representation of the Virgin Hodegetria. One noteworthy difference between Bellini's 1505 San Zaccaria Altarpiece and the earlier altarpieces, San Giobbe Altarpiece and the Frari Triptych is that the architectural setting opens up to a landscape filled with rolling green hills, wispy trees, puffy-white clouds set a light-blue sky. This feature may have been inspired by the now-lost work of Alvise Vivarini, an altarpiece made for Santa Maria dei Battuti, Belluno (formerly Kaiser-Friedrich Museum, Berlin, destroyed in 1945).
Giovanni Bellini apse Alvise Vivarini San Zaccaria Hodegetria St. Mark's Basilica Frari Triptych Virgin Hodegetria composition Venice San Giobbe Altarpiece