Cervara Polyptych

Gerard David, a Flemish painter, made this polyptych in oil on oak panel, probably in Bruges, and it was installed around 1507 on the high altar of Cervara Abbey in Liguria, Italy. According to a seventeenth-century document, the commission came from the Genoese nobleman Vincenzo Sauli, whose name is painted above the Virgin's feet in the central panel. The altarpiece originally had seven panels. After the monastery was suppressed and requisitioned in 1797, the ensemble was scattered. The central panel, showing the enthroned Virgin and Child, along with the side panels of Saint Jerome and Saint Maurus and the upper Crucifixion, stayed in Genoa. Two further panels, showing the angel and the Virgin of the Annunciation, ended up at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, while a semicircular panel depicting God the Father blessing, surrounded by angels, is in the Louvre in Paris. All seven panels were reunited at the Palazzo Bianco in Genoa in autumn 2005.

Painter

Gerard David

Date

1500

Medium

oil paint, oak panel

Dimensions

255 × 218 cm

Museum

Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City

Movement

Early Netherlandish painting

Genre

religious art

Depicts

boy, Mary, woman, Christ Child

Share:FacebookWhatsApp