SmartHistory: Remaking a Fourteenth-Century Triptych
Learn how early Renaissance artists worked from scratch in this fascinating essay, written by Kristin Holder, for SmartHistory.
One of the most recent Kress Collection artworks to travel to the Institute of Fine Arts for treatment is a fourteenth-century portable triptych, Madonna and Child with Saints and the Crucifixion, from the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art. While the triptych was at the Conservation Center, graduate student Kristin Holder used the painting as the subject of a research and reconstruction project. Ms. Holder studied and then carefully reconstructed the triptych using the same materials and techniques as Renaissance artists. Her engaging step-by-step description of the process to re-make the triptych and her insights can be found on the Smarthistory website↗.
Reconstruction (left) of the Madonna and Child with Saints and the Crucifixion (right)
Image credit: Kristin HolderTools used to shape wood (left to right): block plane, sole plane, ruler, mallet, flat chisel, straight gouge, curved gouge, awl, rasp, and cabinet scraper
Image credit: Kristin Holder
