Altarpiece

About

An altarpiece is an image set above or behind a Christian altar, so that the Mass is celebrated before the saints and sacred stories it shows. Over the Middle Ages it grew into some of the largest ensembles in European art. The anatomy is worth learning: a main panel or carved central shrine, side wings that can close, a predella strip along the base with small narrative scenes, and gables or pinnacles above.

Italian painters favoured gold-ground polyptychs, as in Duccio di Buoninsegna's Maestà (1308–11) for Siena Cathedral, before Renaissance artists gathered the saints into one unified space. North of the Alps, hinged wings allowed a plainer everyday face and a festive interior, as in Hubert and Jan van Eyck's Ghent Altarpiece (1432) and the limewood carving of Tilman Riemenschneider. Counter-Reformation churches preferred single tall canvases full of movement and light, by Federico Barocci and later Peter Paul Rubens.