Synopses & Reviews
Museum visitors today usually see pre-16th-century Italian painted altarpieces exhibited alone, as single paintings. Yet this beautiful catalogue shows that these works were once part of decorative, integrated schemes, and the original experience for viewers of the paintings was significantly different from our own.
Focusing on Italian altarpieces from the second half of the 13th century to the very end of the 15th, the book investigates the original functions and locations of altarpieces as well as the circumstances of their dislocations, dismantlings, and reconstructions. Regional variations are also analyzed, and the author examines altarpieces' formal and typological development, taking into account the wealth of related scholarship undertaken in the past thirty years.
Synopsis
This wide-ranging book brings together a rich array of current approaches to panel painting of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, a period that has received far less attention than the Renaissance. From the middle of the thirteenth century onward, Italy witnessed a boom in panel painting. This brought about the transformation of existing object types, including painted crosses, altar frontals, and monumental panels of the Virgin and Child. It also fueled the development of new types of panel painting, particularly various forms of altarpieces, lunette-shaped panels for architectural settings, small-scale panels for personal devotion, and painted chests for private homes.
The international gathering of curators, art historians, and conservators who contribute to this volume discuss specific types of panel paintings, and they also examine local traditions, individual artistic solutions, patronage, production, use, iconography, and the relationship of panel painting to other art forms. Among the broader issues they address are liturgy, aesthetics, the perception and function of religious imagery, and style.
Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts
About the Author
Scott Nethersole is currently Lecturer in Italian Renaissance Art at The Courtauld Institute of Art, London. He was formerly the Harry M. Weinrebe Curatorial Assistant at the National Gallery, London.