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   USA > Chicago > Art Institute of Chicago > European 1400s > Saints John the Baptist and Catherine of Alexandria
Saints John the Baptist and Catherine of Alexandria

Saints John the Baptist and Catherine of Alexandria





Workshop of : Paolo Veneziano

Date : near 1350

Material : Tempera on canvas
Acquisition : Charles H. and Mary F.S. Worcester Fund (1947)
Item 27 on 29
European Painting
Painting

Area related
Venise (Italy)

Description   

Byzantine art exerted a powerful influence in Venice through the city's important trade connections with Constantinople and Byzantium in the eastern Mediterranean. This influence is apparent in the slender, insubstantial figures and rich patterns of gold and brocade found in the paintings of Paolo Veneziano and his workshop, which dominated Venetian altarpiece production around the middle of the fourteenth century.

These two panels must have been placed, perhaps with images of other standing saint, on either side of the central panel of an altarpiece probably depicting the Virgin and Child. No other parts of the altarpiece are known to have survived. In 1930, when Chicago collectors were actively buying early Italian paintings, these panels were bought by different collectors, only to be reunited in the Art Institute's collection in 1958.

Item(s) related   
Saints John the Baptist and Catherine of Alexandria
Paolo Veneziano
Saint Jean-Baptiste
Sainte Catherine d'Alexandrie