Works of devotion in 15th-century Italy

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Susan Grange visits Devotion by Design: Italian Altarpieces Before 1500 at London’s National Gallery

In London and missing Italy this summer?  Go to the National Gallery's new exhibition 'Devotion by Design: Italian Altarpieces before 1500'.  You will be transported to the semi-darkness of the interior of Italian churches illuminated by the rich vibrant colours and spiritual beauty of old – very old – altarpieces.

But what, you might ask, is an altarpiece? Basically, it is a structure placed on or behind an altar in a church.  It can range from a simple horizontal panel or cloth to a huge construction made up of many panels (a polyptych).  It is usually decorated and serves as a focus for enhancing worship and devotion.

The central room of the exhibition has been laid out to evoke a Renaissance-era church.  The latest trend in altarpieces, Luca Signorelli's  The Circumcision  (c. 1490–1) (see image in our light box above), has pride of place over the high altar.  Styles that have passed the peak of fashion have been moved to side 'chapels' or end walls.  Some have frames, some don't, none has a label (although there is a key to the works in the centre of the room).  At times the background chanting of the choir flickers through the air.  The sense of encountering altarpieces in a 15th-century sacred space is palpable.

By way of introduction, the exhibition begins with paintings that show altarpieces in their original context.  These works depict the altarpieces themselves and some of the rituals that took place before them.  They also highlight the architecture, decoration and furniture that would accompany altarpieces.

New light is being shed on the National Gallery's permanent collection. The layout enables us to walk around the back of some of the altarpieces so the actual construction can be seen more clearly.  Particularly highlighted is the change from the often very large polyptychs of the earlier Gothic period to the Renaissance 'pala' (a single, large panel framed in the style of classical architecture).  It is fascinating to be able to access the back of Giovanni del Ponte's polyptych  Ascension of John the Evangelist (c. 1420–4) (see the light box), and see how the multiple panels are fixed together, and then to return to the front and see how the gilded framework pulls together the whole work into a masterly artistic creation.

The who, what, why and when of the creation of altarpieces is not neglected here.  The complex relationships involved in the commission of an altarpiece are explored using the well-documented work,   The Virgin and Child Enthroned among Angels and Saints  (1461–2) by Benozzo Gozzoli (see light box). This shows how interested parties such as the patron, whether a private individual or family or a civic or religious group, would liaise with the religious community or the citizens of the city for whom the altarpiece was to be made.  The context, approach and style would be negotiated to try to please all parties and then be agreed upon with an artist acceptable to all concerned, thus creating a complex web of relationships. This helps to explain how altarpieces came to look the way they do.

Many altarpieces in the past have been dismantled owing to religious, social or political changes and individual pieces sold off to a variety of buyers.  The challenge for today's conservators and art historians is in piecing together dislocated fragments and attempting to reconstruct lost works with the aid of such devices as x-rays and infrared photographs. A variety of dislocated fragments such as painted roundels and panels of saints are on display.  Virtual reconstructions and diagrams help to explain how these fragments once formed parts of decorative ensembles.

The final questions posed in this fascinating exhibition cluster around the concept of the altarpiece itself.  Focusing on works whose function is the subject of debate, the show challenges viewers to consider whether they think the final works on display do or do not fit the notion of what an altarpiece is.

The book  Devotion by Design  by the curator Scott Nethersole, which accompanies the exhibition, forms an excellent, detailed but not unduly academic introduction both to the exhibition itself and to the overall topic of altarpieces.  With approximately 95 colour illustrations it is attractive and appealing as well as informative.

This exhibition appeals on so many levels.  The beauty and richness of the works themselves, the spiritual messages embedded in the imagery, the practical considerations involved in making the works and explaining them in our age by using scientific techniques, the historical sweep of the use and function of altarpieces, and the challenges of identification and reassembling.  To all these can be added that sense of journeying back in time to 15th-century Italy to experience these very old and very moving works of art.