Italian Medieval and Renaissance Paintings and Sculptures

On View: West Building, Main Floor

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367 artworks on view.

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A nearly nude man with peachy skin stands next to and looks up at a man with ashen, ivory-colored skin, wearing armor and riding a bright white horse in this vertical painting. The horizon line comes less than a quarter of the way up the composition, and the sky behind the men and horse is vivid, aqua blue with a few silvery-gray and pale, yellow clouds floating along the top edge of the composition. The painting is created with long, blended brushstrokes, and the limbs and features of the two men and horse are elongated and have delicate, dark outlines. The horse’s body is angled to our right but it looks at us from the corners of its dark eyes. One front leg is raised. The rider looks down toward the man on foot at his side, to our left. The rider has dark, arched eyebrows, a long, straight nose, a pointed chin, and short, copper-orange hair. Wide ruffs pleated into figure-eights encircle his neck and wrists. His chest and arms are covered with plates of steel-gray armor edged and decorated with gold bands and medallions. He wears crimson-red pantaloons and stockings with mustard-yellow boots. With his right hand, to our left, he holds the gold hilt of a long, thin sword along the horse’s body. With his other hand, he holds a swath of lime-green fabric, which drapes down the side of the horse and across the hips of the man standing next to the rider. The sheen of the fabric is suggested with canary-yellow highlights where it catches the light. The standing man has short, dark brown hair and eyebrows. He looks to our right in profile, toward the rider, with pink lips parted. He holds the green fabric with his left hand, to our right, and he has a bandage around his leg near his right ankle. The horse and man stand on a spit of dark brown land, with a landscape of trees, buildings, and mountains deep in the distance beyond.

Saint Martin and the Beggar

Greek 16th Century

1600/1614

Oil on canvas  Accession ID  1937.1.84

On View: West Building Main Floor, Gallery M28
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A man hangs on a cross flanked by small groups of people against a shiny gold background in this vertical panel painting. The people all have pale skin tinged with gray. The man on the cross, Jesus, has long blond hair and a beard, and he wears only a translucent white cloth wrapped around his hips. Blood trickles from nails driven through his hands and one driven through both feet. Blood also spurts from a wound over his right ribs. A halo surrounds his head, which hangs down, eyes closed. The wood cross is about twice as tall as the people standing around it, and a panel at the top has the letters “ICXC” written in gold. A woman with long, unbound blond hair and wearing a vibrant red cloak wraps her arms around the foot of the cross. That woman and four people in the group of five to our left also have halos. There, two people support a woman who has swooned between them. That woman wears a black cloak, and her supporters cry, their brows furrowed and eyes squinted. Two people behind this group, one of whom has a halo, look up at Jesus. To our right, three bearded men also look at the cross. The man closest to us wears a white hood and a canary-yellow cloak over a moss-green robe. He holds both hands up high. A man behind him wears a helmet and a red cloak over sky-blue armor, and we only see the lined face of the third man, who has a white beard and hair. Three angels catch the blood trickling from Jesus’s two hands and the wound on his side in shallow gold cups. Each angel has blond hair, wears a topaz blue, long-sleeved garment, and has two pairs of wings – one coming from their backs and another crossing in front of their torsos. The cross stands on a low mound on a rocky ground. A small human skull is tucked into an opening below the mound. The bright gold background is punched with lines to create an inner border behind the scene, and the panel is framed with gold molding.

The Crucifixion

Bernardo Daddi

c. 1320/1325

Tempera on poplar panel  Accession ID  1961.9.2

On View: West Building Main Floor, Gallery M1
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This painting shows a person standing, their head slightly tilted to the left. They have a pale complexion, and short, wavy blonde hair adorned with a thin red crown. They have rosy, pink cheeks, arched eyebrows, a straight nose, and small lips set in a neutral expression. The individual is wearing a long red robe over a black tunic or dress and is holding a long black quill-like object in one hand, and what looks like a thin staff with a red loop at the end in the other. A detailed golden halo surrounds their head, and the background features an ornate gold pattern which is slightly worn and peeling in some places. The painting is bordered by a golden frame.

Saint Apollonia

Sassetta

c. 1435

Tempera on poplar panel  Accession ID  1943.4.5

On View: West Building Main Floor, Gallery M3
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Shown from the chest up, a clean-shaven young man with pale, peachy skin looks off to our left against a cloudy sky in this vertical portrait painting. His body is angled to our left, and he gazes in that direction with dark eyes under thick, arched brows. He has a long nose, smooth cheeks, and a hint of a five-o-clock shadow around his closed, peach-colored lips. Chestnut-brown hair is covered by a black headdress with two long tails. One end drapes over the front of his right shoulder, farther from us, and the other end hangs down his back. He wears a brick-red garment that falls in vertical pleats from a high collar. A white undergarment peeks out from the top of the neckline, and the collar is fastened with a small clasp at the throat. Behind him, tan-colored clouds float across a blue sky.

Portrait of a Young Man in Red

Giovanni Bellini

c. 1480

Oil and tempera on panel  Accession ID  1937.1.29

On View: West Building Main Floor, Gallery M12
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A winged, nearly nude woman with ivory-white skin, partially wrapped in a crimson-red cloak, delicately holds up the reins of a gray horse as it rears toward her in this vertical painting. They stand on a roughly oval-shaped disk of gray rock carpeted with mustard-yellow growth. Stubby brown branches jut out from its sides. To our right, the woman’s body faces us as she looks toward the horse, to our left. The woman’s honey-brown hair is braided and wound into coils over her temples. The rest is pulled back, and tendrils frame her face and fall over her shoulders. A strand of pearls drapes along her hairline between the braids. Her hazel-brown eyes and slightly parted pale lips are set in a round face. Tall wings edged in earth brown and filled with a blend of ivory, caramel brown, and mustard yellow reach up along either side of her head. Her long cloak is knotted on at her right shoulder, on our left, and drapes across her clavicle, over her other shoulder, and down her back. One corner wraps across her hips and mid-section, and drapes over her outstretched left arm, on our right, revealing bare legs. A cream-white and caramel-brown striped sash under the cloak is tied over one shoulder and knotted under her bare breasts. She holds a short, dark brown tree branch covered with spiky leaves in her left hand, our right. The other hand is raised to daintily hold one end of the thin gold string wound around the horse’s neck. The horse balances on its hind legs with its front hooves dangling in mid-air. His body is angled toward the woman, but his head turns back as he faces us with his mouth hanging open. The horse's head and tail seem too small for its large body. Along the bottom edge of the composition, in front of the spit of land, a mermaid with long blond hair and two charcoal-gray tails swims with arms extended in front of her. The water is pale beige closest to us and transitions to a light blue as it recedes into the distance, where it blends into the milky white sky. Birds fly over ghostly, powder-blue headlands studded with caramel-brown trees in the distance to our left. A boat sails in the water in the distance to our right.

Allegory

Piero di Cosimo

probably c. 1500

Oil on panel  Accession ID  1939.1.160

On View: West Building Main Floor, Gallery M20
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A light-skinned man wearing a voluminous, ocean-blue, hooded robe sits at a cloth-draped writing table and looks up, fingers splayed over an open book and a pen held in his other hand, in this vertical painting. The man and desk take up most of the composition, which has an arched top. The man’s shoulders and body are angled to our right, and he looks off in that direction in profile. His balding head is rimmed with white hair curving over the large ear we can see, and he has a trimmed white and gray beard and mustache. His prominent nose is pointed, and his lips are closed. Light glints off the robe he wears so it shimmers in shades of topaz, aquamarine, and midnight blue. Voluminous white sleeves emerge under the mantle and are edged with narrow lace cuffs. His left hand, to our right, rests on an open book, which is propped against one or two other tomes. Near the edge of the table, two quills stand in the corners of a lidded inkwell, and a round, silver blotter, shaped like an upside-down chalice, and a lidded silver box sit nearby. The man’s chair has a tall post next to his shoulder to our left with a teardrop-shaped, gold finial. A second post, near his wrist, is lower and topped with a gold orb. The chair is draped in the same deep, raspberry-pink of the square table at which he sits. The tablecloth is edged with a wide band of gold along the bottom, and filigree-like gold decorations line the seams or folds at the corners. Brushstrokes are visible in many areas, especially in the colorfully charged blue and pink fabric. Beyond the man, to our right, a statuette of a person wearing a long, white robe over a white dress holds a baby. The clothing is edged with gold, and she wears a sphere-like gold crown. The baby also wears white and holds up one hand. The statuette stands on a platform supported by S-shaped corbels, and could have a projecting, squared awning over the top. This area is more loosely painted so some details are difficult to make out. In the background to our left, a wooden door stands open next to a dark space just behind the man’s head, so his profile is picked out against the shadow. The floor beneath is earth brown.

Saint Ildefonso

El Greco

c. 1603/1614

Oil on canvas  Accession ID  1937.1.83

On View: West Building Main Floor, Gallery M28
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A woman sitting on the floor and cradling a nursing baby in her lap is flanked by two winged angels and a kneeling woman, beneath a bearded man supported on a third angel in this vertical painting. The seated woman, Mary, and the infant, Jesus, have pale, peachy skin, blond hair, and hazel eyes. Mary sits facing us on a long cushion on the floor with her body angled to our right, taking up about half the height of the composition. Her round face is tilted to our right as she gazes up under faint brows. Her marine-blue mantle is trimmed with gold and has a star on her right shoulder, to our left. The mantle covers most of her head and wraps around her tan and bronze-brown robe. The baby swaddled in a rose-pink cloth and reaches for her exposed left breast, which emerges from a place near her shoulder. Jesus lies across a white cloth that also drapes over her left arm. His head is turned slightly away from her breast as he looks up and to our left while his left arm reaches toward the neck of her dress. He has adult-like facial features but a pudgy body, and his ankles are crossed with the toes of his bottom foot flexed. Two winged angels floating to each side are smaller in scale, and are painted entirely in pumpkin orange. They face in toward Mary and Jesus, and wear long, flowing garments. The angel to our left crosses arms over the chest, and the angel to our right holds hands up in prayer. A third orange angel floats above them, seen head-on, gazing down. Above it is the torso of a young man with brown hair and beard, wearing a rose-pink cloak over a peacock-blue robe. He faces us with one hand held up, index and middle finger extended. He holds a closed book the same color blue as his robe in his other hand. Mary, Jesus, the bearded man, and the angels all have halos incised into the gold background, which comes to a point above the bearded man. In the bottom quarter of the painting, the burnt-orange floor is covered with a brocade-like pattern in gold. Set against it in the lower right corner, a woman, much smaller in scale than Mary and Jesus, kneels with her raised hands pressed together as she gazes up at them in profile. She is completely covered by a bone-white, long-sleeved garment, wimple, and long mantle, leaving only her face visible. The inner edges of the panel, including along the pointed top, are punched with floral and geometric patterns. The upper corners of the wooden panel to either side of the point are filled in with gold.

Madonna of Humility, The Blessing Christ, Two Angels, and a Donor [obverse]

Andrea di Bartolo

c. 1380/1390

Tempera on panel  Accession ID  1939.1.20.a

On View: West Building Main Floor, Gallery M3
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This painting shows a person standing, their body turned to us, with their head looking downward to the left. The person has pale skin, round, rosy cheeks, and wavy yellow hair surrounded by a golden halo with intricate patterns. They are wearing a dark robe over a dark red dress or tunic and holding a long, thin red cross in one hand, while the other hand holds a closed red book. At their feet lies a black dog-like animal with wide yellow eyes. The scene is set against a golden textured background within a gilded border.

Saint Margaret

Sassetta

c. 1435

Tempera on poplar panel  Accession ID  1943.4.4

On View: West Building Main Floor, Gallery M3
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A woman sits in the center of this vertical panel painting and gazes down at a baby lying across her lap while two winged angels hold up a red, gold, and black brocade-like patterned cloth behind her. All the people have pale skin, pink cheeks, blond hair, and flat, gold halos. The woman’s body is angled slightly to our right, and she holds her hands crossed over her chest as she gazes down at the baby. The woman has a straight, pointed nose and a small, pink-lipped mouth. Her azure-blue robe covers her head and drapes over much of the crimson-red dress beneath. The edge of the robe and cuff of her dress are trimmed in gold. The baby lies with his arms slightly raised, and he looks up at the woman. His hips and legs are wrapped with sheer white cloth. The angels in the upper corners of the panel both wear robes in the same azure blue of the woman, and the garments have a gold band around the high waist and gold around the neckline. They look at the woman and hold up the cloth that falls behind and under her and the baby.

The Madonna of Humility

Fra Angelico

c. 1430

Tempera on panel  Accession ID  1937.1.5

On View: West Building Main Floor, Gallery M3
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The sculpture is a bust of a woman, focusing on her head and shoulders. She has a high forehead with slightly curling hair pulled back under a smooth cap. Her face includes thin eyebrows, a long nose, a slightly cleft chin, and lips set in a neutral expression. Her eyes are blank, without a visible pupil or iris. Her clothing appears to be an intricately detailed dress, featuring floral patterns and slightly puffed sleeves. The sculpture is carved from a smooth, light-colored material.

A Lady

Italian 15th Century

1475/1485

Marble  Accession ID  1939.1.326

On View: West Building Main Floor, Gallery M9
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Shown from the chest up, an older, pale-skinned man dressed in scarlet red faces us in this vertical portrait painting. His slender body is turned slightly to our right, but his head turns back to our left so he gazes at a point just over our left shoulder. His large, deep-set dark blue eyes are lined with crow’s feet over high, angular cheekbones. His dark brown beard is shot through with silvery gray, and he has brown, chin-length hair and bangs across his lined forehead. His red garment has a high neck, and the opening down the front is lined with white, perhaps fur. A black sash drapes over his left shoulder, to our right. He is illuminated with warm light from the upper left and set against a dark brown background. A portion of an inscribed plaque is visible just over his right shoulder. It reads, “…TIS …OIX.”

Andrea de' Franceschi

Anonymous Artist

late 16th or early 17th century

Oil on canvas  Accession ID  1937.1.35

On View: West Building Main Floor, Gallery M23
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Under an arched structure, five women gather around a baby as two men sit outside the room in this vertical painting. All the people have pale skin with a faint greenish cast. The women have blond hair and the men have gray hair. To our right, a ruby-red curtain has been drawn back along the long side of a bed, and a woman there reclines propped on one elbow, facing into the room. She wears a white veil that covers her hair, neck, and shoulders and a sky-blue robe edged with gold over a navy-blue dress. Her head is encircled with a gold halo, and she looks down toward the baby at the center of the painting. Her wrists are crossed over a gold bowl, and an attendant standing next to the bed pours water from a gold pitcher over her hands. The attendant wears a forest-green dress and a white cloth is wrapped over her head. A pair of women sitting on the floor near the bed hold the infant, who has a gold halo around short, blond hair. Wrapped in a white cloth, the baby stands on the lap of one woman, who wears a rose-pink dress and a white cloth wrapped around her hair. The second woman in this pair, to our left, wears a golden yellow robe over a scarlet-red dress, and her braided hair is wound around her head. She holds both hands up in front of the baby, who looks at her, facing our left in profile. A gold bowl with a flaring foot sits on the floor in front of this trio. Coming through a darkened doorway behind them, a fifth woman wearing a topaz-blue dress enters carrying a gold dish. To our left, the two bearded men sit with their backs to the gray, stone wall enclosing the room with the women. The man closer to us has a long gray beard, and his wavy hair is surrounded by a gold halo. He looks to our left in profile and wears a rose-pink robe edged with gold, over a light blue garment. The second man angles his body toward his neighbor and gestures with one raised finger. The second man has a trimmed, gray beard and he wears a slate-blue robe over a butter-yellow garment. The structure enclosing the scene is made up of several arched openings that do not quite fit together to create a cohesive room. The upper, outer corners of the building are missing, as if in ruin. The background above is shiny gold that has been worn away in some areas to show the red layer underneath.

The Nativity of the Virgin

Andrea di Bartolo

c. 1400/1405

Tempera on poplar panel  Accession ID  1939.1.42

On View: West Building Main Floor, Gallery M3
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