Journal Article

BAD RECEPTION AND THE RENAISSANCE ALTARPIECE

Ekserdjian, David

2021

Overview

This study explores a number of specific examples of the bad reception of altarpieces in Renaissance Italy. It also attempts to investigate the main ways in which both patrons and artists endeavoured to avoid the possibility of commissioned works being rejected, above all because such occurrences were so undesirable for both sides. The case studies which are examined are not wholly unknown, but there is more to be said about almost all of them, not least when they are seen together. Moreover, the overall approach departs from that taken by previous studies in various ways, most obviously in connection with the demolition of the widespread – but manifestly false – notion that contract drawings were invariably highly finished. Specific works that are explored range in date from the second half of the fifteenth century to the first decade of the seventeenth, and particular emphasis is placed upon the extent to which more generally decisions – other than those concerning the basic subject matter of the altarpieces in question, which rested with the patrons – were very often left to the judgement of artists.

• Publisher: Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz, Max-Planck-Institut