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Europe 1300 - 1800
Course: Europe 1300 - 1800 > Unit 3
Lesson 3: Painting in central Italy- Gentile da Fabriano, Adoration of the Magi
- Gentile da Fabriano, Adoration of the Magi
- Gentile da Fabriano, Adoration of the Magi (reframed)
- Masaccio, Virgin and Child Enthroned
- Masaccio, The Holy Trinity
- Masaccio, Holy Trinity
- Masaccio, Holy Trinity (quiz)
- Masaccio, The Tribute Money in the Brancacci Chapel
- Masaccio, The Tribute Money in the Brancacci Chapel
- Masaccio, Tribute Money (quiz)
- Masaccio, Expulsion of Adam and Eve from Eden
- Fra Angelico, The Annunciation (Prado)
- Fra Angelico, The Annunciation
- Fra Angelico's Annunciation (quiz)
- Uccello, The Battle of San Romano
- Fra Filippo Lippi, Madonna and Child with two Angels
- Lippi, Madonna and Child with Two Angels
- Lippi, Madonna and Child with two Angels (quiz)
- Fra Filippo Lippi, Madonna and Child
- Lippi, Portrait of a Man and Woman at a Casement
- Fra Filippo Lippi, The Adoration
- Benozzo Gozzoli, The Medici Palace Chapel frescoes
- Beyond the Madonna, an early image of enslaved people in Renaissance Florence
- Veneziano, St. Lucy Altarpiece
- Antonio Pollaiuolo, Battle of Ten Nudes
- Perugino, Christ Giving the Keys of the Kingdom to St. Peter
- Ghirlandaio, Birth of the Virgin
- Cassone with the Conquest of Trebizond
- Botticelli, Primavera
- A celebration of beauty and love: Botticelli's Birth of Venus
- Botticelli, Birth of Venus (quiz)
- Botticelli, Portrait of a Man with a Medal of Cosimo il Vecchio de’ Medici
- Portraits and fashion: Sandro Botticelli, Portrait of a Young Woman
- Napoleon's booty — Perugino's (gorgeous) Decemviri Altarpiece
- The Early Renaissance in Florence (including painting, sculpture and architecture) (quiz)
- Piero della Francesca, The Baptism of Christ
- Piero della Francesca, Baptism of Christ (quiz)
- Piero della Francesca’s Flagellation of Christ
- A Renaissance masterpiece nearly lost in war: Piero della Francesca, The Resurrection
- Piero della Francesca, Resurrection
- Piero della Francesca, Portraits of the Duke and Duchess of Urbino
- Piero della Francesca, Portraits of the Duke and Duchess of Urbino (quiz)
- Signorelli, The Damned Cast into Hell
- Martini, Architectural Veduta
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Veneziano, St. Lucy Altarpiece
Domenico Veneziano, Saint Lucy Altarpiece, 1445-47, tempera on wood panel, 82 1/4 x 85" or 209 x 216 cm (Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence) Speakers: Dr. Steven Zucker and Dr. Beth Harris. Created by Beth Harris and Steven Zucker.
Want to join the conversation?
- I had never heard of St Lucy before; does anyone know what she was sainted for?(11 votes)
- St Lucy is the patron saint of the blind. She lived in the late 3rd century in Sicily. Legend has it that on discovering she was a Christian, her eyes were removed as punishment by the then pagan Romans. Another legend has it that on being betrothed (against her will) to a pagen who admired her eyes, she tore them out to give to him saying "now let me to God".(30 votes)
- While, as was pointed out, the secondary figures are no longer in separate panels, they are still
'in separate panels' in the sense that each occupies a niche, or a delineated space. The architectural details serve to give each figure his own space/panel within the larger picture. Do you think Veneziano was influenced by the tradition of panels when placing his figures?(6 votes)- Absolutely. It seems to me that Veneziano was so confident of his skills with perspective that he composed an painting which manifested the concept of "the communion of saints" by painting each saint as though they were moving out of their niches and communing with each other, rather than confining each saint physically within his or her own panel.(4 votes)
- Who's the person that's dressed in kingly robes with the crownish thing on the persons head?(5 votes)
- St. Zenobius, He is said to have converted all of Florence and its outskirts entirely, and combated Arianism.(2 votes)
- The scene is set before three arches. Is that perhaps alluding to a more traditional triptych altarpiece, is it symbolic of the Holy Trinity, or am I just reading too much into it?(2 votes)
- The man looks like he is some kind of priest. Most priests were tied to some kind of religion. So it is very possible. Also it is never to bad to read into something educational. :P(1 vote)
- Is the function of this painting devotional?(2 votes)
- This is late, to say the least, but as it's an altarpiece the answer is yes.(1 vote)
- In the caption above the image it says, fresco transferred to canvas. This is not a fresco but a panel painting! Students get confused by this information.(1 vote)
- Thank you for this correction - we took the information provided by the Uffizi on the Google Art Project's site, but that is clearly incorrect.(2 votes)
- What I am so impressed by is the sense of dimension. Is this simply through linear perspective or is there something additional that creates this illusion?(1 vote)
- Most likely it is an illusion. If you can have that good of and illusion and cannot tell if it is 3D or not it is a good piece.(1 vote)
- who is saint lucy?(1 vote)
Video transcript
(piano music) Steven: We're in the Uffizi, looking at Domenico Veneziano's Saint Lucy Altarpiece. This is an artist who's
actually a Venetian, but this was made for a Florentine church. Originally there were five small
predella panels underneath. Beth: That are now in different museums. One of the most interesting
thing about this painting is it's a new type of altarpiece. Usually an altarpiece would have an elaborate gold frame, with subsidiary figures
in separate panels, but here the different saints occupy the same space as the Madonna, so we have less emphasis
on elaborate gold frames and the carpentry and
carving involved in those, and more emphasis on the figures and the believable space that they occupy. Steven: That's what I was going to say. When I look at this, this is a remarkably occupiable space. In other words, I feel
like I could walk around without hitting my head
on the architecture, which was so often the case
in the previous century. Beth: If you think about
Masaccio's Holy Trinity as the first really believable space created by the use of linear perspective, just twenty years before, this is in a way a much
more complex space, and the greens and the rose colors and the white marble remind me of so much architecture that we've seen, like the Duomo here in Florence. Steven: It's true; there really is attention to the architectural space. I'm really taken with the
severely foreshortened tile on the floor, which is a
tour de force expression of linear perspective, and saying, "Well, I can do far more "than a straight line
of tiles on this floor." Beth: Look at John the Baptist's feet. So firmly on the ground; his
foreshortened right foot; a cast shadow behind him, also
the influence of Masaccio. To me this is a bringing together of so much that Masaccio and Brunelleschi did in the 1420s and '30s. Steven: There's also a kind of specificity in the rendering of the figures. Lucy, at the extreme
right, is so beautiful, and in a perfect profile, almost as we would expect
a Renaissance portrait. The figure next to Lucy is Saint Zenobius, one of the few saints
associated with Florence. Christ is a real child here. There is an understanding
of the anatomy of an infant, with its babyfat and that large head, and there's a real sense of
his mother's delicate touch. Look at the way her finger
just comes under his toe. It's really just lovely, whereas John the Baptist, he looks tough. It's so interesting to see
these figures all in one space. Think about the figures chronologically. You have the Virgin Mary and Christ, who lived roughly fifteen-hundred years before this was painted, and Francis, who would have lived just a few hundred years
before this was painted. Beth: Right; Domenico
Veneziano is mixing saints up, from all different time periods, and bringing them together
into this one space. Steven: And that's really the definition of the word that's often used for these kinds of paintings, which is sacra conversazione. That is, to bring figures from different historical periods together into an altarpiece environment. Beth: And "sacra conversazione" means "a sacred conversation." (piano music)