ALTARPIECES AND AGENCY: THE ALTARPIECE OF THE SOCIETY OF THE PURIFICATION AND ITS ‘INVISIBLE SKEIN OF RELATIONS’

Abstract

To consider the Renaissance altarpiece as an active social force, this article draws on ideas concerning the efficacy of works of art articulated by Alfred Gell in his compelling book Art and Agency (1998). Considering as a case study the altarpiece depicting the Virgin enthroned with saints and angels, commissioned by the Florentine Confraternity of the Purification in 1461 and painted by Benozzo Gozzoli, the text investigates the network of relationships that generated the work, including the confraternity's association with the Virgin, the Medici family, the convent of the Observant Dominicans, the citizens of Florence and the painters Fra Angelico and Benozzo Gozzoli. The essay argues that Renaissance altarpieces played a dynamic and practical role in the social life of the period. Moreover, it contends that altarpieces themselves were causal in the creation of works of art, and links this analysis to the problem of interpreting altarpieces that were made to be pictorially similar to an already existing work. Michelle O'Malley is the Director of the Office for Research Support in the School of Humanities at the University of Sussex; previously she was the Head of Education for Exhibitions at the Royal Academy of Arts, London. Her published work includes The Business of Art: Contracts and the Commissioning Process in Renaissance Italy (Yale University Press, forthcoming 2005) and The Material Renaissance, co‐edited with Evelyn Welch (Manchester University Press, forthcoming 2007). She is currently working on issues of valuing and pricing, focusing on the career of Pietro Perugino. Her interest in questions of agency is related to this topic.