How do we move away from being a civilization that produces art that causes comments like, “my five year old could make this,” back to being one that creates beauty and inspires deep questions? We must reject modernity and embrace tradition. To embrace tradition, we must first learn about it.
Let’s study art history together.
Resurrection
Artist
Andrea Mantegna
Year
1457–59
Medium
tempera on panel
Dimensions
70 cm × 92 cm (28 in × 36 in)
Location
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Tours, Tours
As Resurrection paintings go, this one is fun because it’s relatively early (15th century before the Americas were (re)discovered by Columbus. It’s also fun because it has a little bit of attitude and what the youths might refer to as “aura.”
This particular painting has a bit of a strange history, too. It spent its first few hundred years as an altarpiece artwork in Verona. The painting was part of what is called a predella.
In art, a predella (plural predelle) is the lowest part of an altarpiece, sometimes forming a platform or step, and the painting or sculpture along it, at the bottom of an altarpiece, sometimes with a single much larger main scene above, but often (especially in earlier examples), a polyptych or multipanel altarpiece. In late medieval and Renaissance altarpieces, where the main panel consisted of a scene with large figures, it was normal to include a predella below with a number of small-scale narrative paintings depicting events from the life of the dedicatee, whether the Life of Christ, the Life of the Virgin or a saint. Typically there would be three to five small scenes, in a horizontal format. Sometimes a single space shows different scenes in continuous representation.
Flemish altarpiece of the 1550s, still with three predella scenes
They are significant in art history, as the artist had more freedom from iconographic conventions than in the main panel as they could only be seen from close up. As the main panels themselves became larger and more dramatic, predellas fell from use around 1510-20 in the High Renaissance, although older or more conservative painters continued to use them, for example Luca Signorelli, by then in his 70s, in about 1521. In this case he is thought to have only done the underdrawing for the main scene, leaving the painting to his workshop assistants. But he is thought to have painted the predella scenes himself.
They had fallen out of fashion in Italy by the mid 16th century, but continued for a while further north. As altarpieces reached the art market from the 18th century onwards, the predella scenes (and other smaller sections) were often detached and sold separately, in effect as cabinet paintings, and they are now often spread across several museum collections, with their origin often uncertain. Reuniting, at least conceptually, predella panels with the rest of their original settings gave 20th-century art historians a large task, which continues into the 21st century.
More generally, and not usually in the English language, a predella is an altar-step, a shelf above and behind an altar, or a piece of furniture with a lower part to kneel on, for prayer, and often a higher part to support the arms. In English the French term prie-dieu is normally used for this. Predel or pretel, was Langobardic for “a low wooden platform that serves as a basis in a piece of furniture”. In English this step is referred to as a gradin, which may include a predella in it. A predella is also the lower part of a stained-glass window.
This particular predella scene, along with the rest of the altarpiece, was looted by the French and Napoleon in the late 1700s. After Napoleon was defeated, the main altarpiece scenes were returned, but this predella painting was not returned. Today the original painting is on display in Tours while a copy is in place with the original altarpiece.
For a great review of this piece, and the larger altarpiece of which it was designed to be a part, I highly recommend the following video:
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