Italian gold-ground painting

Many of the early works in the paintings collection of the J. Paul Getty Museum are altarpieces and fragments of altarpieces made for Italian churches. They were placed above altars and served as the focal point of the Mass.

Churches in the 1300s were often architecturally plain, sparsely decorated, and quite dark. Gold-leafed altarpieces provided bursts of color and embellishment, and the candle light that typically illuminated the churches made the gold shimmer.

Other, smaller panels were used for private devotion. These works were either placed on an altar in a home, displayed on a piece of furniture, or hung on the wall of a bedchamber or other private room.

Use our zoom feature to take a closer look at the altarpiece shown above: Polyptych with Coronation of the Virgin and Saints. Look for these elements in this Italian gold-ground painting:

Gold is a symbol of heaven in medieval paintings. Holy figures were placed against gold backgrounds to suggest their proximity to God. Sgraffito is the Italian word meaning “scratched.” A layer of paint over the gold was scratched off in small patterned areas to create effects such as gold brocade fabric. Tools and punch marks created the indented floral, leaf, and geometric patterns impressed upon the gold. Some were punched with a carved tool, while others were done freehand. These patterns can occasionally be associated with an individual workshop. The predella is the lower-horizontal section of an altarpiece that often contains several separate narrative scenes.

Altarpieces occasionally suffered damage over centuries of use, particularly in the lower areas closest to the altar. In the predella of the altarpiece shown above, the left portion of the central scene has been lost. Because there was no evidence of the original composition in this area, it was replaced with a neutral tone.

In the central panel of the opulent altarpiece, Christ crowns his mother, the Virgin Mary, as gathered angels and saints look on. The altarpiece decorated a chapel dedicated to Saint Benedict in the church of Santa Trinità, Florence, which explains why Saint Benedict is portrayed twice—on the left panel and again in a scene below.

The altarpiece's various panels do not depict episodes in chronological order. In the pinnacles above the central scene, which were added at a later date, the Archangel Gabriel announces the conception of Christ to the Virgin. Below, in the predella, the Virgin's death is represented at the center. To either side are scenes of saints triumphing over evil. On the far left, Saint Benedict exorcises a devil, and in the panel to the right, Saint John baptizes Christ. To the right of the Virgin's death, devils torment Saint Anthony while, on the far right, Saint Lawrence liberates a soul from purgatory.

Cenni di Francesco di Ser Cenni used lavish amounts of gold leaf and different types of punch marks and tooling to create haloes and background decorations. He took great pains to include details such as attributes for saints on the side wings and landscapes in most of the predella panels. The opulence and sheer elaborateness of this altarpiece inspired awe in Christian viewers of the late 1300s, and remain impressive today.