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| Bicci di Lorenzo and Stefano d'Antonio di Vanni Annunciation Altarpiece ca. 1430 tempera on panel Walters Art Museum, Baltimore |
"Composition is of fundamental importance in the arrangement of fresco cycles or large, complex narratives, and it became particularly important in altar painting from 1430 onward, when artists started to use a single square or rectangular panel instead of a triptych or polyptych. When a painting consists of a series of adjacent panels within a single frame, the composition has to be simplified, demanding an easily readable sequence of scenes or figures. But in the case of a unitary altarpiece, the figures enter into direct reciprocal relationships within an architectural or natural setting that both accommodates them and suggests how they should be perceived in space."
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| Fra Angelico Virgin and Child ca. 1430 tempera on panel Harvard Art Museums |
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| Master of the Osservanza Triptych Descent of Christ into Limbo ca. 1445 tempera on panel Harvard Art Museums |
"Painters and sculptors in the fifteenth century rarely signed their works. The idea that art has a history that is linked to the works of individual great artists was beginning to take hold in Italy. Still, in terms of social status, sculptors and painters were regarded as skilled craftsmen, like tailors or armorers: valued for their manual and technical skills rather than for the poetic or conceptual content of their work. That explains why they were paid by the hour or the working day, and also why many works remain anonymous. In the second half of the century, however, the artist's self-image began to change. He started to feel that he was not just part of a local tradition or just another member of a craft guild. In order to satisfy the increasing demands of his patrons, he tried to develop a personal, independent style, so that his work could be distinguished from that of his competitors. Humanist thinkers began to compare the work of the artist to that of the poet, and fine art was promoted from the mechanical to the liberal arts."
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| Filippo Lippi and workshop Madonna and Child ca. 1446-47 tempera on panel Walters Art Museum, Baltimore |
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| Filippo Lippi St Jerome in the wilderness with St John the Baptist and St Ansanus ca. 1455 tempera on panel Harvard Art Museums |
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| Niccolò da Foligno St Sebastian ca. 1450-1500 tempera on panel Harvard Art Museums |
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| Niccolò da Foligno Seraph ca. 1450-1500 tempera on panel Walters Art Museum, Baltimore |
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| Giovanni di Paolo St Nicolas of Tolentino saving a shipwreck 1457 tempera on panel Philadelphia Museum of Art |
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| Gentile Bellini Portrait of a Doge, probably Pasquale Malipiero ca. 1460-62 tempera on panel Museum of Fine Arts, Boston |
"At first, the subjects [of fifteenth-century portraiture] were placed against neutral backgrounds and appeared thoughtful or engaged in prayer. . . . Humanist investigations and the increasing interest in collecting antiquities (including coins) reinforced this tendency, with the result that the subjects began to assume the calm, self-confident attitude of Roman emperors."
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| Giovanni Bellini Virgin and Child ca. 1470 tempera on panel Harvard Art Museums |
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| Neri di Bicci Coronation of the Virgin with Angels and Four Saints ca. 1470-75 tempera on panel Walters Art Museum, Baltimore |
"A Florentine chronicle from the year 1472 helps give us some idea of the comparative incidence of the various craft activities: according to this account, there were forty active workshops of painters in Florence, forty-four of goldsmiths, more than fifty of high- and bas-relief sculptors, and more than eighty of wood inlayers and engravers. The basic workshop tool was the drawing. In art workshops in late-Gothic times it was customary to make notebooks of drawings: drawings of individual figures, animals, plants, heraldic emblems, and decorative details were used as a catalogue of iconographic formulae. These elements, established by tradition, were easily adapted to the most diverse techniques and applications, from painting to goldwork, textiles to miniatures, and furniture decoration to clothes – all to satisfy court tastes. At the end of the fifteenth century the late-Gothic notebooks were augmented and gradually replaced by "model books," whose new purpose was to disseminate knowledge of ancient works, and (by collected studies of posed figures) anatomy and drapery. Especially in Tuscany, the latter were used to train pupils and to bring their style into line with that of their master. In some cases the stock drawings were used in combination with posed models, usually workshop boys."
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| Benvenuto di Giovanni Expulsion from Paradise ca. 1470-80 tempera on panel Museum of Fine Arts, Boston |
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| Carlo Crivelli St James the Greater 1472 tempera on panel Brooklyn Museum |
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| Carlo Crivelli Dead Christ supported by Angels ca, 1475-80 tempera on panel Philadelphia Museum of Art |
– quoted passages excerpted from European Art of the Fifteenth Century by Stefano Zuffi, translated by Brian D. Phillips (Getty Museum, 2005)