Room 60

Notice whether an altarpiece gives each saint a separate compartment or gathers several figures into one broad space. During the later 1400s, Florentine patrons increasingly chose a single rectangular field for a religious painting. Architecture, landscape and perspective could now connect the figures within it. Antonio and Piero del Pollaiuolo’s The Martyrdom of Saint Sebastian brings many bodies into a carefully organised scene of violence. Other pictures show different workshop solutions to religious stories. Artists often trained in several crafts, and assistants helped meet the demand for complex commissions. Look at how a figure’s position relates to the space around it, rather than treating perspective as a rule to memorise.