FRANKFURT, GERMANY.- The Städel exhibition “Cult Image: Altarpiece and Devotional Painting from Duccio to Perugino” traces the development of the Italian altarpiece and – intimately interwoven with it – Italian panel painting between the thirteenth and the late fifteenth century. Many of the works are no longer intact but divided into their individual elements, and most are now in museums. Thus, they have been removed from their original functional context and, as a result, have become difficult to understand for the present-day viewer and may strike him as even strange. This circumstance is aggravated by the fact that the works on view represent a conception of art which has changed radically since Renaissance times. This is why the exhibition “Cult Image” pursues the double goal of conveying an idea of the contemporary attitude towards pictures and of acquainting the visitor with the evolving conception of art and its production in the period from Duccio to Perugino. This elucidates how the vivid exchange between altarpiece and devotional painting also contributed to the development of all those genres that we take for granted today: the narrative scene, the portrait, the still life, and the landscape picture. In addition to the outstanding paintings from the collections of the Städel Museum, the exhibition includes a number of loans from important national and international collections, such as the Lindenau-Museum Altenburg, die Gemäldegalerie Berlin, the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Lyon, the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza in Madrid, the Louvre in Paris, and the Museo Nazionale di San Matteo in Pisa.

The exhibition “Cult Image” is sponsored by the Ernst-von-Siemens-Kunststiftung. It is also supported by the Georg und Franziska Speyer’sche Hochschulstiftung, Ferrero Deutschland GmbH, Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena SpA, and San Paolo Imi SpA.

“Cult Image” focuses on the painting of an era in which there was no “art” in the modern sense. When we speak of art today, we are unwittingly availing ourselves of a definition which only developed with the Italian Renaissance and centers on the artwork’s “artistic value.” Neither Duccio or the Lorenzetti brothers in fourteenth century Siena, nor the Florentines Lorenzo Monaco and Fra Angelico in the early quattrocento would have conceived of their productions in these terms: for them, it was still the “cultic value” of their works that was most important. Not until the mid-fifteenth century did painters such as Andrea Mantegna begin to develop the modern conception of art. But the real advance in the understanding of “art” was brought about by the artists’ generation of Raphael, the famous pupil of Perugino, around 1500. Before that, it was less the “art object” than the “Cult Image” that constituted the focus of artists and their patrons alike – which is also reflected in this exhibition.

No image is more closely associated with religious cult than the altarpiece. The altarpiece served not only as a kind of decorative backdrop in front of which priests celebrated Mass; it also visualized either the promise of salvation contained in the Mass or, alternatively, the relics kept in the altar table. Even if we now take the altarpiece for granted as a liturgy-related element of the church furnishings, it owes its existence in good part to a fundamental development in ecclesiastical liturgy: from Early Christian times, the priest had usually stood behind the altar during the worship service, communicating with the congregation across its top. In the thirteenth century, however, he changed locations. Now the priest stepped in front of the altar and turned his back to the congregation during the celebration of Mass. This revision in the practice of the church service – however trifling it might appear – marks the advent of the altarpiece, for it allowed pictures to be installed on the altar mensa and displayed there permanently.

Hardly any pictorial function asserted itself as successfully, and within as short a time, as that of the altarpiece. This form of image proved to be an ideal means of satisfying the worshippers’ need for visualization who more and more wanted to see what they believed in or were expected to believe in. This set of circumstances explains not only the amazingly rapid triumphant advance of the altarpiece throughout Europe, but also the development of a wide range of altarpiece types, particularly in Italy. The most important artists of the day were involved in this process, and the cult sites for which these innovations were devised and produced were the religious and political centers of their times.

The exhibition revolves around two outstanding altarpiece ensembles: the main altarpieces from Siena Cathedral, which have come down to us only in fragmented condition, and the first extant high altarpiece from the Benedictine abbey of S. Pietro in Perugia. Guido da Siena executed his altarpiece comprising a Madonna and Child as well as various narrative accounts of Christ’s life, three of which can be presented in the exhibition, for Siena Cathedral in ca. 1270. The work replaced – and artistically surpassed – the miraculous depiction of the Virgin reputed to have secured the victory of the Sienese over the far superior Florentine army in the Battle of Montaperti in 1260. For before the battle, in what looked like a hopeless situation, the Sienese had consecrated themselves and their city to the Mother of God. Upon achieving victory, they pronounced Siena the City of the Virgin Mary. Guido da Siena’s panel was highly venerated. Nevertheless, as early as 1311, it had to make way for a grandiose new depiction of the Virgin on the high altar: Duccio’s “Maestà,” which also combines a monumental Madonna picture with a series of narrative scenes from the New Testament. Then, in the 1330s, this masterwork was joined by four major many-part altarpieces to the right side and to the left side of the crossing. These were executed by Simone Martini, Pietro and Ambrogio Lorenzetti, and Bartolomeo Bulgarini and consecrated to the city’s former patrons. This revolutionary innovation – a pictorial narrative in the center of the altarpiece – was to have a decisive impact on the further development of this genre.

Altering attitudes towards how an altarpiece should be devised as well as the replacement and supplementation of the various altarpieces by more recent – and thus more “modern” – works clearly evidence changing tastes. This aspect is also illustrated by another crucial altarpiece ensemble which originally adorned the high altar of S. Pietro in Perugia: the horizontal rectangular retable by Meo da Siena, painted on both sides, is shown in the exhibition in its entirety. One-hundred fifty years later, it was likewise replaced by another picture that better satisfied newly emerged contemporary expectations: Pietro Perugino composed his Ascension of Christ (now in Lyon) as a mighty composition in a vertical rectangular format and thus in the taste of the Renaissance.