| This study examines the reasons for the radical reduction in the amount of gold used in altarpieces of fourteenth- and fifteenth-century Italy. It demonstrates that religious attitudes, combined with a number of more frequently-cited stylistic factors, played an important role in causing the reduction.;Chapter 3 reviews medieval Western texts which make reference to the meaning of gold in religious art, and analyzes which texts are relevant to panel painting in Italy. The evidence shows that any perceived symbolic value that gold might have had was no longer accepted by the most important religious leaders in fifteenth-century Florence, Dominici and Antoninus, who saw gold in religious art as a distracting element.;Chapter 4 is a comprehensive description of the manner in which gold was eliminated from the grounds of panel paintings in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. An additional evaluation is made of the manner in which the form of haloes changed. The chapter concludes with a brief discussion of the use of gold for ornamental details and light rays.;Chapter 5 evaluates three other explanations that have been proposed for gold's diminished use: waning gold supplies, an increased emphasis on artistic skill, and humanist and monastic asceticism. It is finally argued that the negative perception of the value of gold in religious paintings by fifteenth-century monastic ascetics was the integral element causing its elimination.;Four main chapters follow the introduction. Chapter 2 discusses the meaning of gold in Byzantine icons, using the liturgy and the writings of the Church Fathers as documents. It shows that Westerners were aware of that meaning, but it concludes that, although Western artists copied the gold from the art of their Eastern counterparts, they did not copy the specific meaning that gold held in Byzantine icons. |
