Paolo Veneziano - The art of painting in 14th century Venice

In reuniting for the first time the dispersed components of two of his rare surviving altarpieces and presenting them alongside contemporaneous objects, this book and the exhibition it accompanies - at the J. Paul Getty Museum (2021) and the Frick Collection (2022) - will demonstrate how his innovative and visually rich work engaged with fourteenth-century advances in manuscript illumination, ivory carving, textile production, and metalwork.

Paolo Veneziano (act. 1333-58) practiced his art within a culture enriched by Venice's maritime economy, with materials and techniques coming to his native city from Byzantium, Africa, Persia, and Asia. His workshop received prestigious commissions in Venice and beyond, many of them for elaborate altarpieces composed of painted panels within intricately carved gilt-wood frames.