The Art of Devotion: Panel Painting in Early Renaissance Italy was published in conjunction with the exhibition of the same name held at the Middlebury College Museum of Art and Mount Holyoke College Art Museum in 2009. As Richard Saunders, the director of Middlebury’s museum, explains, the exhibition was inspired by the museum’s acquisition in 2005 of a panel painting by the Florentine painter Lippo d’Andrea (ca. 1370–1451) of the Virgin and Child Enthroned with Saints John the Baptist and Nicholas of Bari (cat. 4). Such acquisitions and exhibitions of historic art are particularly important for colleges and universities to employ as teaching tools, to raise the status of their collections, to appeal to the local population and tourism outside of major cities, and to stimulate the scholarship of less well-known artists and artworks. Indeed, The Art of Devotion adds significantly to the study of the so-called “minor” Florentine masters of the early fifteenth century by reviewing and updating attributions, emphasizing the importance of workshop practices, and reminding the reader of the personal and devotional uses of small works of art by individuals, confraternities, and guilds, whether in the home or in the chapel.

The Art of Devotion joins other studies that have emerged from exhibitions of works by Late Gothic masters and of devotional art of the early fifteenth century (e.g., Visions of Holiness: Art and Devotion in Renaissance Italy, Andrew Ladis and Shelley E. Zuraw, eds., Athens: Georgia Museum of Art, University of Georgia, 2001; and L’Età di Masaccio: il primo Quattrocento a Firenze, Luciano Berti and Antonio Paolucci, eds., Milan: Electa, 1990). The Art of Devotion is similar in that it brings together minor and major artists, devotional and liturgical images, and sculpture and paintings from early fifteenth-century Tuscany. Often the aims of such projects are to discover the seeds of the Renaissance in the Late Gothic and to demonstrate the persistence of medieval styles alongside the avant-garde.

Appropriately, in the introduction Laurence Kanter, himself a writer about early Quattrocento masters, connoisseurship, and devotional art, reminds the reader of Roberto Longhi’s seminal essay on the relationship between Renaissance and Gothic (“Fatti di Masolino e di Masaccio,” La Critica d’Arte 25–26 [July–December 1940]: 145–91). Indeed, Longhi’s article remains the basis for understanding not only Masaccio’s genius but also the relationship between Masaccio’s innovations (fig. 2, p. 20) and the efforts of the Late Gothic painters (“indifferenti,” “confusi,” and “sbalorditi”) to employ new developments while clinging to long-established principles (fig. 9, p. 37; cat. 14). What sets The Art of Devotion apart from the catalogues mentioned above is its focus on the period around 1410, that is, before the monumental advances of Masaccio. Certainly Longhi himself recognized the importance of the art created just before Masaccio’s rise in the 1420s and its continuation not only in the work of the Late Gothic painters but in that of Masaccio himself (fig. 2, p. 48).

In the first essay, “Circa 1410,” Katherine Smith Abbott takes the reader back to the late fourteenth century and discusses the century’s indebtedness to Giotto for his simplicity, geometry, and development of the monumental draped figure (fig. 1), fundamentals that in the late Trecento were combined with curving outlines, metallic chiaroscuro, and flattened forms by artists such as Giovanni del Biondo (figs. 4, 5, p. 24; fig. 7, p. 28). Thus, the first catalogue entry, Del Biondo’s Madonna and Child with Saints, dated 1385 (cat. 1), forms the basis for studying those of about 1410: the Madonna with Saints by the Master of the Straus Madonna (cat. 3) and Middlebury’s newly acquired panel by Lippo d’Andrea (cat. 4). Also included here is Gentile da Fabriano (cat. 2), who stands out for his non-Tuscan origins, advanced ideas about form, sensitivity in representing the human figure, high skill level, and interest in realism. Moving forward chronologically, the works of 1415–20 by Lippo d’Andrea (cat. 7) and the Master of 1419 (Battista di Biagio Sanguini, cats. 10, 11) reveal the influences of such artists as Gentile da Fabriano (cat. 10; cat. 2), Masolino (cat. 11), and Lorenzo Monaco (cat. 7). Following these, from the decade of 1420–30, are works by artists such as Giovanni dal Ponte (cat. 14), Ventura di Moro (cat. 9), and followers of Ghiberti (cats. 12, 13). Thus, the works of these Late Gothic masters present a gentle stylistic development from the late Trecento through the early Quattrocento, as the artists employed curving outlines, softened and rounded forms, and created harmonious color combinations atop the basic design and spatial principles of Giotto. Clearly, by 1422 Masaccio had already diverged from this path (fig. 2, p. 48), and by 1426 he had established a different direction, toward the representation of monumental, three-dimensional figures turning in perspective, atmospheric spaces (fig. 2, p. 20).

Regarding connoisseurship, The Art of Devotion contributes to an understanding of the work of Lippo d’Andrea, formerly known as Pseudo-Ambrogio di Baldese, whose oeuvre was first established by Ugo Procacci. Based on Procacci, the Virgin and Child in Worcester (fig. 8, p. 35) and the altarpiece at Yale (cat. 7) define d’Andrea’s style. As for the other paintings given to Lippo d’Andrea, the attribution of the panel acquired by Middlebury (cat. 4) seems correct, while the Legendary Subject (cat. 5), the standing saints (cat. 6), and the Madonna and Child with Four Saints (cat. 8), all noted as “attributed to,” remain questionable.

Both the first essay by Smith Abbott, mentioned above, and the following one by Wendy Watson treat the artworks of the Late Gothic masters primarily as commodities produced in workshops to be sold, bought, and displayed in the home or chapel. Smith Abbott points out the difference between smaller panels made for personal devotion and larger, more complex ones for public worship. The authors refer to the documents of Francesco Datini who bought and sold small panels as a side business. However, the letters to and from the famed Merchant of Prato may also serve the theme of devotion. Written during the crucial early time period (1385–1410), the correspondence reveals that Datini himself ordered that his own personal devotional image be carried with him on the road and that this hardened businessman actually grew in piety and charity (Elizabeth Bailey, “Francesco di Marco Datini: Tuscan ‘Man of Sorrows’ and the Devotional Image during the Aftermath of the Black Death in the late Trecento,” Explorations in Renaissance Culture 6 [Summer 2010]: 3–26). Smith Abbott also quotes Giovanni Dominici (23) to demonstrate how images were displayed in the home to teach children and provide them with proper role models. However, the words of Dominici may also be used to suggest how the devotee visually used his image, that is, contemplating one object or figure in a painting at a time, as recommended in popular devotional literature, thus leading to “visual encounters with the divine” (23).

The catalogue itself is handsomely illustrated, clearly organized, and informative on items and subjects such as date, size, location, medium, provenance, and connoisseurship. The short texts also contain descriptions and ideas suggesting how the artworks might have been used in devotion. For example, in the first image (cat. 1) Giovanni del Biondo “pays special attention to the close knit relationship between the Virgin and Child,” and places an inscription on the frame which reads, “Hail sweet Virgin Mary, help us good mother.” Smith Abbott states that, “the nature of this pious prompt emphasizes the way such paintings functioned in the lives of their owners, particularly women” (74). Another example is Middlebury’s own tabernacle (cat. 4), which includes Saint Nicholas of Bari, “revered at the time for his embodiment of compassion and attention to the poor” (80). One wishes that such discussions about how the individual images themselves might have been viewed by the devotee could have been developed further. For instance, the Middlebury Madonna is the popular form of the Madonna of Humility in Glory with kneeling saints, conveying the devotional message that through lowering oneself in humility one may rise to salvation. The use of images in devotion has been the subject of recent books (e.g., Victor Schmidt, Painted Piety, Panel Paintings for Personal Devotion in Tuscany, 1250–1400, Florence: Centro Di, 2005; and Beth Williamson, The Madonna of Humility: Development, Dissemination and Reception, c. 1340–1400, Suffolk, UK: Boydell Press, 2009 [click here for review]). The Art of Devotion contributes to this study by exhibiting and publishing Middlebury’s newly acquired Madonna tabernacle along with others by d’Andrea and his contemporaries, thus providing the opportunity for “a more rigorous investigation . . . from scratch, very cautiously” (13).