What Is a Polyptych?
And can you say it three times fast?
Polyptych with Coronation of the Virgin and Saints, about 1390s, Cenni di Francesco di Ser Cenni (Italian, (Florentine). Tempera and gold leaf on panel, 140 × 94 1/8 in. Getty Museum, 71.PB.31
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How do you describe a work of art?
With art terms, of course!
We’ve heard you, and we’re here to answer your Frequently Asked Art Questions (FAAQs). Today, we’re taking a look at a 12-foot-tall work of 14th-century art to define a mouthful of a term: polyptych.
First, let's make a stop in the late middle ages, when patrons began to decorate altars in churches with increasingly complex and spectacular works of art called altarpieces.
Polyptych with Coronation of the Virgin and Saints, the work of art you see above is an altarpiece. It was originally displayed in Santa Trinta, a church in Florence patronized by the political influential Gianfigliazzi family.
But what do altarpieces have to do with polyptychs? And how do you pronounce it?
Find out in the video below:
