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Botticelli’s “The Birth of Venus” is a 15th-century tempera painting showcasing the Renaissance interpretation of classical mythology. It depicts the goddess Venus rising from the sea, an iconic image representing beauty and love. The artwork, now in the Uffizi Gallery, was created by one of the era...
Sandro Botticelli (c. 1445-1510) was a prominent Italian painter of the Renaissance period. He is best known for his allegorical and mythological paintings, particularly “The Birth of Venus,” which exemplifies the artistic style of Florence during that era. His work influenced generations of artists...
The Maestà is a large, originally double-sided altarpiece painted by Duccio di Buoninsegna for the high altar of Siena Cathedral and installed there in 1311. Its principal front presented the enthroned Virgin and Child surrounded by saints and angels, while numerous smaller scenes narrated the lives...
The Ognissanti Madonna is a large tempera-and-gold panel painted by Giotto di Bondone around 1310, probably for the Church of Ognissanti in Florence, and now in the Uffizi Gallery. It shows the Virgin and Child enthroned beneath a Gothic canopy and surrounded by angels and saints. Giotto gives the t...
The San Marco Altarpiece is a sacra conversazione painted by Fra Angelico around 1438 to 1443 for the Dominican convent of San Marco in Florence. It presents the Virgin and Child enthroned among angels and saints within a unified, perspectivally organized space, with a painted crucifixion placed bef...
The Pisa Polyptych was an extensive altarpiece painted by Masaccio in 1426 for a chapel in the Carmelite church of Santa Maria del Carmine in Pisa. It combined a central enthroned Madonna and Child with saints, a Crucifixion, predella narratives, and other panels arranged in a Gothic frame. The stru...
The Santa Trinità Maestà is a large tempera and gold altarpiece painted by Cimabue around 1290 to 1300 for the church of Santa Trinita in Florence. It depicts the Virgin enthroned with the Christ Child, surrounded by angels, while prophets appear beneath the throne. The work retains Byzantine conven...
The Annunciation Altarpiece in Cortona is an early Renaissance work painted by Fra Angelico around 1430 and now housed in the Museo Diocesano in Cortona, Italy. It presents the angel Gabriel and the Virgin beneath an elegant arcaded loggia, with the expulsion of Adam and Eve visible at the left. Its...
The Rucellai Madonna is a monumental tempera-and-gold altarpiece painted by Duccio di Buoninsegna in 1285 for the Florentine confraternity known as the Laudesi at Santa Maria Novella. It shows the enthroned Virgin and Child surrounded by angels within an ornate architectural frame. Long attributed t...
Sandro Botticelli's Adoration of the Magi, painted around 1475, is a tempera panel now in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence. The biblical worship of the Christ Child is populated by contemporary Florentine figures, including portrait likenesses traditionally identified with Cosimo de' Medici and other...
The Santa Lucia dei Magnoli Altarpiece, also called the St. Lucy Altarpiece, was painted by Domenico Veneziano around the mid-1440s and is now in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence. Its main panel places the Virgin and Child with Saints Francis, John the Baptist, Zenobius, and Lucy in a single, carefull...
The Stefaneschi Altarpiece is a double-sided polyptych produced by Giotto and his workshop around 1320 for Old St. Peter's Basilica in Rome. Cardinal Giacomo Gaetani Stefaneschi commissioned it for an altar associated with Saint Peter and appears within the work as a kneeling donor holding a model o...
Andrew Wyeth is a prominent 20th-century American painter recognized for his intensely detailed realism depicting rural landscapes of Pennsylvania and Maine. His works, primarily created using tempera, often explore themes of isolation and memory. He is most notably associated with paintings like *C...
The Uffizi Coronation of the Virgin is a tempera-and-gold altarpiece painted by Fra Angelico during the early Italian Renaissance, probably around 1432. It depicts Christ crowning the Virgin above ordered ranks of angels, saints, and blessed figures, with extensive gilding creating a luminous sacred...
Lorenzo Monaco's Coronation of the Virgin is a large tempera-and-gold altarpiece completed in 1414 and now in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence. The central scene shows Christ crowning the Virgin amid a radiant assembly of angels and saints, with additional sacred narratives distributed across the work...
The Linaiuoli Tabernacle is a painted and sculpted devotional ensemble commissioned in 1432 by Florence's guild of linen manufacturers and merchants. Fra Angelico painted its panels, including the enthroned Madonna and Child and figures of saints, while Lorenzo Ghiberti designed the marble tabernacl...
The Coronation of the Virgin is a large altarpiece painted by Fra Filippo Lippi for the church of Sant'Ambrogio in Florence and completed in the 1440s. Its central scene presents God the Father crowning the Virgin amid ranks of angels, saints, and kneeling witnesses arranged across a unified celesti...
The Baroncelli Polyptych is an early fourteenth-century altarpiece in the Baroncelli Chapel of the Basilica of Santa Croce in Florence. Its central composition depicts the Coronation of the Virgin surrounded by densely ordered groups of angels and saints, while the side panels contain additional hol...
Sandro Botticelli's Coronation of the Virgin, also known as the San Marco Altarpiece, was painted around 1488-1490 for the chapel of the goldsmiths' guild in the church of San Marco in Florence. Now in the Uffizi Gallery, the tempera panel divides its composition between a celestial coronation surro...
Andrea Mantegna's Agony in the Garden is a small tempera painting produced around 1455-1456 and now held by the National Gallery in London. It depicts Christ praying in Gethsemane while three disciples sleep below and soldiers approach through a rocky landscape. The panel is generally associated wit...
The Strozzi Altarpiece is a large polyptych painted by Andrea di Cione, known as Orcagna, for the Strozzi Chapel in Santa Maria Novella, Florence. Completed in 1357, it places Christ in Majesty at the center, accompanied by the Virgin, Saint John the Baptist, Saint Thomas Aquinas, and other holy fig...
The Bologna Polyptych is a multi-panel altarpiece painted by Giotto and his workshop around 1330, now in the Pinacoteca Nazionale di Bologna. Its central image of the Virgin and Child is flanked by standing saints beneath pointed Gothic arches. The work combines a traditional devotional format with...
The Perugia Polyptych is an altarpiece painted by Fra Angelico for the church of San Domenico in Perugia and now preserved in the Galleria Nazionale dell'Umbria. Dating from the early Italian Renaissance, it consists of multiple panels centered on the Virgin and Child, accompanied by saints and smal...
The Polyptych of Saint Luke is an altarpiece painted by Andrea Mantegna in the 1450s for the church of Santa Giustina in Padua and now preserved in the Pinacoteca di Brera in Milan. Its separate panels present Saint Luke with other saints arranged within a unified architectural framework. The work i...
The Maestà formerly associated with Santa Maria dei Servi in Bologna is an enthroned Virgin and Child attributed to Cimabue and generally dated to the late thirteenth century. Mary appears frontally on an elaborate throne, surrounded by angels arranged in ordered tiers. The painting retains the form...
The Thornham Parva Retable is a painted medieval English altarpiece, generally dated to the fourteenth century and preserved in the Church of Saint Mary at Thornham Parva in Suffolk. Its long panel contains scenes from the lives and Passion of Christ, framed by decorative architectural forms. The re...
Multi-panel altarpiece attributed to Giotto (c. 1301–1302), made for the Badia Fiorentina in Florence; its panels are now dispersed across several museum collections.
The San Barnaba Altarpiece is a large tempera panel painted by Sandro Botticelli around 1487 to 1488 for the church of San Barnaba in Florence and now held by the Uffizi Gallery. It presents the Virgin and Child enthroned beneath an architectural canopy, accompanied by six saints in a sacra conversa...
The Barbadori Altarpiece is a tempera panel painted by Fra Filippo Lippi around 1437 to 1438 for the Barbadori Chapel in Santo Spirito, Florence. Its main panel, now in the Louvre, depicts the Virgin and Child standing within an architectural setting and attended by angels and saints in an early for...
Early 14th-century polyptych by Sienese master Simone Martini, painted for the church of Santa Chiara in Naples and notable for its refined gold-ground Gothic elegance.
