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Gentile da Fabriano

Adoration of the Magi, 1423

Studies after an Figures from an Antique Sarcophagus, n.d.

This blog is likely going to be a little slow until school starts up again but I’ll try to keep posting a modest amount of pretty pictures for you all.

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Master of the Triumph of Death

Triumph of Death, c.1330s

Gaddi was a student of Giotto and he paints in a very similar style except he had an obsession with studying the effects of light. His work at the Baroncelli Chapel in Florence, where this scene is from, is his best known art.

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Taddeo Gaddi

Annunciation to the Shepherds, 1327-1330

Small ivory devotional altars like this were popular for those who could afford them throughout the medieval and early renaissance era. They acted as a sort of portable prayer station. This one here shows the popular International Gothic style, as evidenced in the gracefully curved figure of the Virgin, and still contains traces of the polychrome paint that would have originally coloured it.

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Unknown French artist

Tabernacle with Scenes from the Life of the Virgin, 14th century

I’ve been too busy this week to blog regularly so in the meantime, enjoy this gorgeous 14th century Italian altarpiece.

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Lorenzo Veneziano

Lion Polyptych, 1357

I adore this work for how insanely modern it looks. This is the right wing of the Melun Diptych, commissioned by the king’s secretary Étienne Chevalier. The Virgin is believed to be modeled after Agnès Sorel, a beloved mistress of King Charles VII who passed away two years before this was painted at the age of 28. 

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Jean Fouquet

Virgin and Child from the Melun Diptych, c.1452-1455

This fresco resides in the San Miniato al Monte Sachristy, Florence. Aretino completed a series of works here depicting stories from the life of St. Benedict, a saint closely associated with exorcisms as is evident above. Aretino was a follower of the revolutionary Giotto di Bondone and his influence can be seen in the rounded tube-like construction of the figures.

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Spinello Aretino

Exorcism of St. Benedict, 1387 

Niccolò dell’Arca’s group of statues in the S. Maria della Vita of Bologna foreshadow the sculptural realism we see in the High Renaissance. These terracotta figures would have originally been enhanced with polychrome paint which has faded over the centuries. This kind of intense realism may have been inspired in part by the physical reenactments of the Passion performed in churches, a tradition that still lives on in some countries. 

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Niccolò dell’Arca

Lamentation over the Dead Christ, 1462-3