Altarpiece
An altarpiece is a painting or sculpture, including relief, of religious subject matter made for placing at the back of or behind the altar of a Christian church. Though most commonly used for a single work of art such as a painting or sculpture, or a set of them, the word can also be used of the whole ensemble behind an altar, otherwise known as a reredos, including what is often an elaborate frame for the central image or images. Altarpieces were one of the most important products of Christian art especially from the late Middle Ages to the era of Baroque painting.
The word altarpiece, used for paintings, usually means a framed work of panel painting on wood, or later on canvas. In the Middle Ages they were generally the largest genre for these formats. Murals in fresco tend to cover larger surfaces. The largest painted altarpieces developed complicated structures, especially winged altarpieces with hinged side wings that folded in to cover the main image, and were painted on the reverse with different simpler images. Often this was the normal view shown in the church, except for Sundays and feast days, when the wings were opened to display the main image. At other times visitors could usually see this by paying the sacristan.
Altarpieces with many small framed panels are called polyptychs; triptychs have a main panel, and two side ones. Diptychs, with only two equally sized panels, were usually smaller portable pieces for individuals. The predella is a row of much smaller scenes running below the main panel; often these showed narrative scenes related to the subject of the main image. They were only properly visible from close up, but the extra height allowed the main panels above to be clearly seen by the congregation, and any shutters to be opened and closed with less disturbance to other items on the altar.
Many altarpieces have now been removed from their church settings, and often from their elaborate sculpted frameworks, and are displayed as more simply framed paintings in museums and elsewhere.
History
Origins and early development
In the first several centuries of large Christian churches being built, the altar tended to be further forward in the sanctuary than in the later Middles Ages and a large altarpiece would often have blocked the view of a bishop's throne and other celebrants, so decoration was concentrated on other places, with antependiums or altar frontals, or the surrounding walls.Altarpieces seem to have begun to be used during the 11th century, with the possible exception of a few earlier examples. The reasons and forces that led to the development of altarpieces are not generally agreed upon. The habit of placing decorated reliquaries of saints on or behind the altar, as well as the tradition of decorating the front of the altar with sculptures or textiles, preceded the first altarpieces. In the Romanesque period, painted altar frontals on panel seem to have been a common alternative location for paintings. Few survive, though small Catalonian churches preserved several, many now in the Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya in Barcelona. The development of altarpieces may have begun at the altars of side chapels, typically engaged with the wall behind, rather than at freestanding main altars.
Many early altarpieces were relatively simple compositions in the form of a rectangular panel decorated with series of saints in rows, with a central, more pronounced figure such as a depiction of Mary or Christ. An elaborate example of such an early altarpiece is the metal and enamel Pala d'Oro in Venice, extended in the 12th century from an earlier altar frontal. The appearance and development of these first altarpieces marked an important turning point both in the history of Christian art as well as Christian religious practice. It was considered a "significant development" because of its impact on the "nature and function of the Christian image...the autonomous image now assumed a legitimate position at the centre of Christian worship".
The emergence of panel painting
Painted panel altars emerged in Italy during the 13th century, and until the Renaissance were generally the largest and most significant type of panel painting. In the 13th century, it was not uncommon to find frescoed or mural altarpieces in Italy; mural paintings behind the altar served as visual complements for the liturgy. These altarpieces were influenced by Byzantine art, notably icons, which reached Western Europe in greater numbers following the conquest of Constantinople in 1204. During this time, altarpieces occasionally began to be decorated with an outer, sculptured or gabled structure with the purpose of providing a frame for individual parts of the altarpiece. Vigoroso da Siena's altarpiece from 1291 is an example. This treatment of the altarpiece would eventually pave the way for the emergence, in the 14th century, of the polyptych.The sculpted elements in the emerging polyptychs often took inspiration from contemporary Gothic architecture. In Italy, they were still typically executed in wood and painted, while in northern Europe altarpieces were often made of stone.
In the early 14th century, the winged altarpiece emerged in Germany, the Low Countries, Scandinavia, the Baltic region and the Catholic parts of Eastern Europe. They spread to France, but remained rare in Italy. By hinging the outer panels to the central panel and painting them on both sides, the subject could be regulated by opening or closing the wings. The pictures could thus be changed depending on liturgical demands. The earliest often displayed sculptures on the inner panels and paintings on the back of the wings. With the advent of winged altarpieces, a shift in imagery also occurred. Instead of being centred on a single holy figure, altarpieces began to portray more complex narratives linked to the concept of salvation.
Late Middle Ages
As the Middle Ages progressed, altarpieces began to be commissioned more frequently. In Northern Europe, initially Lübeck and later Antwerp would develop into veritable export centres for the production of altarpieces, exporting to Scandinavia, Spain and northern France. By the 15th century, altarpieces were often commissioned not only by churches but also by individuals, families, guilds and confraternities. The 15th century saw the birth of Early Netherlandish painting in the Low Countries; henceforth panel painting would dominate altarpiece production in the area. In Germany, sculpted wooden altarpieces were instead often preferred, for example the Veit Stoss altarpiece in Kraków, while in England there was a 15th-century industry producing relatively cheap painted altarpiece kits in Nottingham alabaster, many of which were exported, the frame being added at the destination.In England, as well as in France, stone retables enjoyed general popularity. In Italy both stone retables and wooden polyptychs were common, with individual painted panels and often with complex framing in the form of architectural compositions. In Spain, altarpieces developed in a highly original fashion into often very large, architecturally influenced reredos, sometimes as tall as the church in which it was housed.
Renaissance and Reformation
The 15th century also saw a development of the composition of Italian altarpieces where the polyptych was gradually abandoned in favour of single-panel, painted altarpieces. In Italy, the sacra conversazione developed, a group usually centred on the Virgin and Child, flanked by a group of saints usually chosen to represent the patron saints of the church, city, religious order or donors. These became increasingly informal in pose, and some may have been initially displayed in the donor's house, then bequeathed to a church as a memorial. They represented the same components as many altarpieces with framed compartments, but with a single pictorial space.Other types of Italian composition also moved towards having a single large scene, sometimes called a pala, often dispensing with the predella. Rather than static figures, narrative scenes from the lives of the main figures grew in popularity; this was to become the dominant style for large altarpieces over the next centuries. Originally mostly horizontal in format, they increasingly used vertical formats. Some were as much as 4 metres tall, and concentrated on a single dramatic action. This much height typically required a composition with an in aria group to fill the upper part of the picture space, as in Raphael's Transfiguration, though The Raising of Lazarus by Sebastiano del Piombo is almost as tall, using only a landscape at the top.
In Italy, during the Renaissance, free-standing groups of sculpture also began to feature as altarpieces. The most famous example is the Pietà by Michelangelo, originally placed as the altarpiece in a side chapel of Old St Peter's.
File:Cranach Reformationsaltar.jpg|thumb|Lucas Cranach the Elder's Lutheran Wittenberg Altarpiece, 1547
The Protestant Reformation under Martin Luther initially persisted with the creation of new some altarpieces reflecting the doctrines of the Lutheran Church, sometimes using portraits of Lutheran leaders in their statuary. Lutheran altarpieces, including those of the Last Supper, were commissioned under his purview. The Schneeberg Altarpiece was placed at the high altar of St. Wolfgang im Salzkammergut and as Lutheran sacred art, reflected "the devotional forms of fifteenth- and early sixteenth century northern art". The Schneeberg Altarpiece, along with the Wittenberg Altarpiece and the Weimar Altarpiece, were Christocentric in their iconography and "these altarpieces reinforced the key teachings of the new church and helped consolidate a sense of confessional identity." Within eastern Germany alone, Lutheran patrons erected thirty new altarpieces. Most pre-Reformation altarpieces were preserved within Lutheran churches as the "altar was still believed to be a particularly holy place, and should be adorned accordingly."
In contrast, Reformed Christianity opposed all large public religious images such as altarpieces, and by about 1560 production of Reformed Protestant ones had mostly ceased. Outbursts of iconoclasm locally led to the destruction of many altarpieces. As an example, during the burning of the Antwerp Cathedral in the course of the Calvinist Reformation in 1533, more than fifty altarpieces were destroyed. If anything, the Calvinist destruction stimulated the creation of more and larger altarpieces in Catholic Europe. Titian produced a number of ones with very large single scenes, mostly now on canvas. Among the most influential were his Assumption in the Frari Church, the Pesaro Madonna in the same church, Killing of Saint Peter Martyr.
The Reformation, both Lutheran and Reformed, regarded the Word of God – that is, the gospel – as central to Christendom, and Protestant altarpieces were often painted biblical text passages. With time, Protestant thought gave birth to the pulpit altar, in which the altarpiece and the pulpit were combined, making the altarpiece a literal abode for the Word of God.
File:Tizian 041.jpg|thumb|Titian, Assumption in the Frari Church, 1518, panel, 690 cm × 360 cm