GENTILE DA FABRIANO
(b. ca. 1370, Fabriano Marche, d. 1427, Roma)

Quaratesi Polyptych: Four Saints

1425
Tempera on panel, 197 x 57 cm (each)
Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence

The polyptych is from the Quaratesi chapel in San Niccolò Oltrarno, Florence. The central panel of the polyptych is flanked by four saints, each on a separate gabled panel. The four saints represented are Mary Magdalen, Nicholas of Bari, John the Baptist, and George. In the upper tondos supported by angels and cherubs are the Angel Annunciating, St Francis, St Dominic, and the Virgin Annunciate.

Despite the fragmentation of this work, the solid figures of these saints demonstrate the way Gentile da Fabriano's painting developed during the time he spent in Florence. Without jeopardizing the grace of his lines or the richness of his materials, the painter seems aware of the strides being made in art around that time by Masolino and Masaccio. The flowering grass of his early work is here replaced by a tiled floor. Each figure is treated with a solemn human and monumental characterization. He achieved this by a more rigorous definition of the volume the figures occupy in real space. But overall it remains thoroughly Gothic in its atmosphere.