MASTER of Pratovecchio
(active 1435-1455 in Florence)

Pratovecchio Altarpiece (lateral panels)

c. 1450
Tempera on wood
National Gallery, London

The crowning achievement of the Master of Pratovecchio was an elaborate Gothic altarpiece painted for the Camaldolese nunnery of San Giovanni Evangelista at Pratovecchio. The triptych (now dismembered) had its centre the Assumption of the Virgin. The lateral panels (now in the National Gallery, London, in regilded and partly reconstructed frames) represents St Michael, and St John the Baptist, as well as a bishop saint (possibly St Donatus of Arezzo) and a female martyr (possibly Antilla). They are flanked by piers decorated on their front and outer surfaces with standing figures of saints. Above them are roundels with the angel and the Annunciate Virgin. At the top are the pinnacles representing the Virgin and St John the Evangelist. These two figures flanked a panel of the Crucifix, now lost. This type of multistoried late Gothic altarpiece remained popular in provincial areas of Tuscany well into the middle years of the fifteenth century.




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