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The Art of Devotion

Panel Painting in Early Renaissance Italy

2009
Katherine Smith Abbott, Wendy Watson, Andrea Rothe, Jeanne Rothe, Laurence B. Kanter
Paperback, 116 pages
$25.00

At heart a collaborative venture, the creation of early fifteenth-century panel paintings in Italy depended upon a tight network of connections between patrons, painters, woodworkers, and gilders. The product of these interactions was an object that served both as a focus for devotion, and as an emphatic statement about wealth and status. This exhibition catalogue illustrates works in ten different collections and explores how these objects were made and what they reveal to us about those who produced and owned them. Featuring artists such as Giovanni del Biondo, Giovanni dal Ponte, Gentile da Fabriano, and Lippo d’Andrea, the catalogue essays and entries explore the ways in which these works—often described as “conservative,” or “late Gothic,” offer a more authentic view of the early Renaissance, one that balances our notion of a time and place characterized solely by departures from tradition.