Medieval | Renaissance: A Dialogue on Early Italian Painting

September 2–December 7, 2025 | Daley Family Gallery

Click thumbnails to view selected objects in exhibition

The closing centuries of the Middle Ages in Italy witnessed profound transformations in the art of painting. New techniques gave way to an expanded repertoire of formats and artistic styles; patronage systems and workshop practices evolved in tandem with reassessments of the merit of authorship; and long-standardized criteria for value and authenticity in representation were steadily redefined. These paradigm-shifting developments—exemplified in Early Italian painting—ramified into the academic study and connoisseurship of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, creating a blurry line between the Medieval period and early modernity that has proven difficult to shake.

Medieval | Renaissance foregrounds this distinction, exhibiting nineteen rarely shown works from the Frascione Collection in Florence, founded in 1893. Featuring devotional icons, altarpiece panels, narrative scenes, and portraits from the late thirteenth through early sixteenth centuries, the exhibition charts innovations in the craft and conceptualization of painting in Italy after 1300. These paintings represent a liminal epoch between the later Middle Ages and the Early Renaissance, whose works and artists are shared—even “claimed”—by two divergent art historical fields, “Medieval” and “Renaissance,” with their own cultures, questions, and interpretive methods.

Curated by John Lansdowne and Stephanie C. Leone, specialists in Medieval and Renaissance art, respectively, the exhibition invites viewers to contemplate the works through two distinct art historical lenses and from either side of a long-standing and long-debated disciplinary divide.

Organized by the McMullen Museum, Medieval | Renaissance has been underwritten by Boston College with major support from the Patrons of the McMullen Museum.