Italian Medieval and Renaissance Paintings and Sculptures

On View: West Building, Main Floor

Gallery number

367 artworks on view.

The Presentation of the Virgin in the Temple

Andrea di Bartolo

c. 1400/1405

Tempera on poplar panel Accession ID 1939.1.41

On View: West Building Main Floor, Gallery M3

Shown from the chest up, a pale-skinned, clean-shaven man with brown hair and wearing brown looks up and slightly to our right in this vertical portrait painting. The man’s brown eyes gaze up under low, dark brows. He has a square face with a rounded nose, a wide chin, and his thin lips are closed. Wavy brown hair falls almost to his shoulders from under an earth-brown, brimless cap. Vertical pleats fall from the high neck of his coffee-brown garment, which is lined with a narrow band of white at the neck. The man is lit brightly from our left, but his clothing and hair nearly blend into the dark brown background.

Portrait of a Man

Alvise Vivarini

c. 1495

Oil on panel Accession ID 1939.1.355

On View: West Building Main Floor, Gallery M12

Portrait of a Man as Saint George

Giuseppe Caletti

c. 1620s

Oil on canvas Accession ID 1939.1.98

On View: West Building Main Floor, Gallery M25

A woman holding a nude child sits against a gold background in this vertical painting, which has a long, pointed top. They both have pale skin tinged with green, blond hair, delicate features, and pink cheeks. The woman sits on a cushion with her body angled to our left and holds the baby on her right knee. She tips her head and looks down at the child with hooded eyes. She wears a cream-white dress under a midnight-blue cloak lined with forest green. She braces the baby’s torso with her right hand, to our left, and holds the pale pink cloth on which he sits with the other. The child’s body faces her, and he touches the clasp of her cloak with one hand. The other hand rests on her shoulder. Both have decorative, patterned halos punched into the gold background. The white cushion is patterned with white-petaled flowers with tiny red centers. The brown floor is speckled with white dots and perhaps minuscule flowers, but the area is dark and difficult to make out. A bearded man shown from the waist up floats overhead in a much smaller scale. He has a gold halo, blond hair, and wears a yellow robe. Six pink wings are lined up down his arms. Gold rays fan down from his body to reach a white bird between him and the woman. The panel has molding around its edges and flame-like carvings up the pointed top.

Madonna of Humility

Sassetta

c. 1435/1440

Tempera on poplar panel Accession ID 1939.1.246

On View: West Building Main Floor, Gallery M3

This painting shows a young person from the waist up, sitting with their hands folded on a brown surface. The person is angled slightly to the left, looking up into the distance. They have pale skin, soft, rounded facial features, and long, wavy light brown hair. They wear a vibrant red garment with green ties down the front and a red cap on their head. In the background, there are rocky blue and brown cliffs, tall leafy green trees, and tall gray buildings and towers under a clear blue sky.

Portrait of a Youth

Agnolo di Domenico del Mazziere, Donnino di Domenico del Mazziere

c. 1495/1500

Oil on panel transferred to canvas and solid support Accession ID 1939.1.294

On View: West Building Main Floor, Gallery M6

An old man and a young woman holding an infant are seated together in the center of this almost square painting. All three people have pale, peachy skin. To our left, the man sits on a low, tan brick wall with his head bowed to look at the baby on the woman’s lap. A periwinkle-blue cloak is wrapped around the kelly-green robe that covers his shoulders, back, and legs. One hand grips a short staff planted on the ground. His receding white hair and beard are thin and scraggly with tufts sticking out over his ears. The woman sits next to and slightly in front of him, to our right, on a low rock, her body angled toward the man. A long, cobalt-blue cloak is draped around her shoulders and covers her knees over her rose-pink gown. Her honey-brown hair is parted in the middle and gathered at the back of her head. Her brown eyes look down at the infant, who is blond with brown eyes. A long white shawl is tucked into the neckline of her dress, drapes over her shoulders, and wraps under the baby as she cradles his body with one hand under his backside and the other behind his head. The baby lies on his back with his head turned toward the woman, and he points to her with one outstretched arm. The dirt ground is scattered with pebbles that make a loose ring around the trio, with moss-green growth to either side. A brown brick wall fills the upper half of the composition behind the people and extends off the top edge. A rounded arch pierces the back wall to our right of the woman. On the other side of the opening, trees with copper-brown leaves grow up along the left and the landscape beyond opens onto rocky hills with a white, square tower. In the deep distance, the silhouette of a town is painted in robin’s egg-blue against a pale peach horizon line. Thin, white clouds skim across the blue sky above.

The Holy Family

Giorgione

probably c. 1500

Oil on panel transferred to hardboard Accession ID 1952.2.8

On View: West Building Main Floor, Gallery M10

Set on a strip of land under a cloud-filled sky and in front of a stormy sea, a nude, light-skinned satyr reclines to our right as a nude, pale-skinned, blond child crouches over some objects on the dirt ground to our left in this vertical landscape painting. The satyr has with a man’s body and shaggy, goat’s legs. He leans over and peers into a golden urn, which has a round bottom and tall, flaring sides about the height of his torso. One hand holds the single handle and the other wraps around the body of the urn. The tips of the satyr’s ears are elongated and pointed, and the corner of his mouth curves up into an exaggerated smile in his brown beard. Red liquid pours from an object, perhaps an overturned urn, near the satyr’s outstretched leg and white liquid pours from another urn between us and the satyr. Next to the satyr, at the center of the painting, a thick, upright tree trunk is broken off abruptly but one shoot grows tall with emerald-green leaves. A translucent, shield-shaped object decorated with an open-mouthed, human face hangs from a pink ribbon around the broken trunk near the branch. A second shield outlined in red with a rearing, white lion against a royal-blue field leans against the foot of the tree to our left. Nearby, the pale, naked child holds a pair of sticks, possibly a compass, and reaches for other objects on the ground near the shield, including a white disk, a pair of small, red-covered books, a square and possibly a plumb line, a flute, pan pipes, and a scroll of paper. The ground and landscape around each person are distinctly different. To our left, the dirt ground under the child is littered with small rocks. Beyond a row of larger boulders, a sweeping field of lemon-lime green sweeps up into a bank of clouds. A small nude person with dark forms, perhaps representing wings, on their shoulders, arms hips, and ankles ascends a path up toward the clouds. To our right, the satyr reclines on green grass in front of a screen of three lush trees. Beyond, across the entire landscape, a choppy sea extends into the far distance beneath the steel-gray clouds above. A masted ship is swallowed by waves behind the satyr, to our right.

Allegory of Virtue and Vice

Lorenzo Lotto

1505

Oil on panel Accession ID 1939.1.156

On View: West Building Main Floor, Gallery M25

A nude man holding a book in one hand and a rock down by his other side kneels at the opening of a rocky cave in this vertical painting. The man’s body and the shadowy cave opening nearly fill the composition. The man’s torso and limbs are elongated and sinewy, and his skin is painted in tones of ivory white and pale peach with smoky gray shadows. His body is squared to us as he turns his long face to look up and off to our left. He has dark brows over deep-set eyes, a prominent nose, hollow cheeks, and his thin lips are closed. He has short white hair and a frost-white beard. His skin pulls tightly over the tendons in his neck, across his collarbone, and over his ladder-like ribcage. He is nude except for a loosely painted, light-colored cloth across his hips. His left arm, to our right, lies along an open book, which rests against his hip or on a rock in the cave. A few touches of red line the hand that grips the rock, which he holds away from his body with his other hand. The craggy face of the cave opening is loosely painted, and the interior is swallowed in complete darkness. The man raises his face toward rays of canary yellow and cotton white against a turquoise-blue sky in the upper left corner of the canvas.

Saint Jerome

El Greco

c. 1610/1614

Oil on canvas Accession ID 1943.7.6

On View: West Building Main Floor, Gallery M28

Shown from the lap up, a young woman sits behind the back corner of a gray, stone platform, supporting a small naked baby boy standing on the ledge in this vertical painting. Both have pale, almost golden skin tones and blond hair. The woman sits with her body angled to our right, and she tilts her head down toward the baby, looking past him with hooded, brown eyes. Her wavy hair is tied back and held with a thin red band above her forehead. A white veil over the crown of her head drapes down the back of her neck and wraps loosely around her shoulders. She wears a flowing, wide-sleeved robe of cobalt blue trimmed with a band of gold embroidery in designs resembling calligraphic letters. The navy-blue lining, seen at the sleeves and collar, is densely flecked with gold dots. The hems of her rose-pink dress, visible at her forearms and chest, are edged with gold embroidery and white lace. The baby stands on the ledge in front of the woman, slightly to our right. Her right hand, on our left, rests on the baby’s right shoulder with one finger brushing his cheek, while her other hand supports his other side at his waist. The child stands on pudgy legs with his left foot forward, hips sharply tilted down toward his left hip. His body faces us, but his brown eyes look over and past our left shoulder, into the distance. He has short curly hair, a round face and cheeks, and delicate facial features. His hands are raised to his chest so the thumb of his right hand touches the palm of his left. Flat, plate-like golden halos seem to rest atop both of their heads. Each halo has a black rim and is decorated with rings of dots. Filling the background immediately behind them, crisscrossing branches of a thorny rosebush fills the panel. More than two dozen white, pink, and red roses are shown in all stages, from bud to bloom, and the branches are lined with jagged-edged, deep green leaves. The roses are set against a cloudless sky that fades from powder blue along the top to nearly white along the bottom.

Madonna and Child

Anonymous Artist

c. 1470

Tempera on poplar panel Accession ID 1942.9.50

On View: West Building Main Floor, Gallery M4

Madonna and Child

Benedetto da Maiano

c. 1475

Marble Accession ID 1960.5.16

On View: West Building Main Floor, Gallery M9

Three men with crowns and wearing gold-trimmed robes stand and kneel before a woman sitting on a wooden, box-like seat holding a baby to our right, in front of a rocky cave and landscape, in this horizontal painting. A balding man with a gray beard and hair, Joseph, and two younger people with blond hair stand around the woman, Mary, to our right, while a group of five young men or boys and three horses gather near the left edge. All the people have pale skin. Mary, the baby Jesus, Joseph, and the three men closest to them all have shimmering gold halos. One balding man with a long white beard kneels and kisses the baby’s feet. He wears a gold and crimson-red brocade-like robe over a burgundy-red garment, and he holds a pointed gold crown in his right hand, which rests on the ground. Behind him and to our left, a younger man with curly blond hair and goatee, wearing a wine-red tunic belted with gold and a gold crown on his head, holds his hands in prayer as he kneels down on one knee. The third stands to our left, cleanshaven with long blond hair. He wears a fur-lined, thigh-length scarlet-red robe and a gold crown, and he holds up a gold vessel in one hand. To our right, Mary wears a lapis-blue robe that covers her head and falls to her feet. The baby is covered only by a white cloth across his hips, and he has short blond hair. He touches the kneeling man’s head with one hand. His body is pudgy but his face has more adult-like, delicate features. Joseph stands at the woman’s far shoulder, wearing a butter-yellow robe over a rose-pink garment. His hands are gathered on a walking stick in front of his chest and his brows are furrowed with deep lines. One of the two younger people behind Mary, to our right, holds a lidded gold vessel. The group of five attendants to our left gather around cream-white, gray, or chestnut-brown horses. These blond people wear garments of dark olive-green, coral-red, royal-blue, or rose-pink tunics over black stockings. The rocky, brown cave behind Mary and Jesus, to our right of center, is occupied by a donkey and an ox behind a wooden trough. The landscape beyond is segmented into quilt-like squares of stylized crops. The horizon line comes almost to the top edge of the panel beneath a narrow strip of vivid, cobalt-blue sky. A gold star like a sunburst with rays of light hovers over the woman and child.

The Adoration of the Magi

Giovanni di Paolo

c. 1450

Tempera on panel Accession ID 1937.1.13

On View: West Building Main Floor, Gallery M3

The sculpture depicts a woman holding a child. The woman is seen from the waist up, wearing a gold robe with black details. Both the woman and child have pale skin with rosy cheeks, golden hair, and red lips in neutral expressions. The child is a young toddler, portrayed naked, with his arms on the woman's shoulders and his feet among the folds of her robe. The sculpture has a rectangular base in red and gold.

Madonna and Child

Florentine 15th Century

c. 1425

Painted and gilded terracotta with wood backing Accession ID 1943.4.93

On View: West Building Main Floor, Gallery M5

Italian Medieval and Renaissance Paintings and Sculptures