National Gallery Exhibition - Italian Altarpieces before 1500

From 6th July to 2nd October 2011 the National Gallery, London will be showing a small exhibition, in its Sainsbury Wing, entitled; Devotion by Design: Italian Altarpieces before 1500.

This free exhibition will explore the Altarpiece in context, using items from the Gallery's own collection, to show the developments of form and style from 1250-1500.

The National gallery website describes the exhibition;

As part of a programme of summer shows focusing on the National Gallery’s collection, ‘Devotion by Design’ explores the function, the original location, and the development of altarpieces in Italy during the late Middle Ages and the early Renaissance.
Altarpieces in context

These objects furnished altars in churches and were not originally intended to hang in a gallery as we see them today. Instead, they were created for a specific sacred context, forming the focus of devotion for worshippers.

Using the Gallery’s own collection, this exhibition investigates the development of altarpieces, looking at changes in form, style and type. It examines not only the evolution of their physical structure but also their relationship to their frames and to the monumental architecture that surrounded them.
The parts of an altarpiece

A small section of ‘Devotion by Design’ will be dedicated to altarpiece fragments, explaining the role different elements of altarpieces played in the overall ensemble. The exhibition examines the reasons why altarpieces came to be dismembered (often with the dissolution of religious institutions in the 18th and 19th centuries) and the methods that art historians now use to reassemble them.

‘Devotion by Design’ showcases altarpieces by well-known artists such as Piero della Francesca, but includes many which are less familiar. It revisits works in the National Gallery Collection in a fresh and innovative light, drawing on the wealth of scholarship undertaken in this field in recent years.

The Altarpiece itself has had a shifting symbolism in the eyes of the art historians, considered to be works of art in their own right and products of artistic genius, or devotional pieces of work intended for one purpose only.

The Altarpiece in the Renaissance - by Peter Humfrey, Italian altarpieces 1250-1550: Function and Design - by Eve Borsook, Fiorella Superbi Gioffredi & The altarpiece in Renaissance Italy - by Jacob Burckhardt are some notable literary works on the Altarpiece, its context and artistic worth, which are good books to look over before you attend the exhibition.

The National Gallery will also produce an Exhibition Catalogue, which is available for pre-order through amazon.co.uk;

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Devotion-Design-Italian-Altarpieces-National/dp/1857095251/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1295332315&sr=1-3

See also:

http://books.google.com/books?id=Mekjfh8R3R8C&pg=PA175&dq=The+Altarpiece+in+the+Renaissance&hl=en&ei=bjM1TaDGDsfl4gb4_oXOCg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=3&ved=0CC4Q6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=The%20Altarpiece%20in%20the%20Renaissance&f=false

http://nationalgallery.org.uk/whats-on/exhibitions/devotion-by-design