Stefaneschi Triptych

This altarpiece has two painted faces. Begin with the face visible to you and notice how its figures gather around a central throne. Giotto and his assistants painted the triptych around 1320 for old St Peter’s Basilica, where clergy and congregation could see it from different sides of an altar. A triptych has three main panels. One face places Christ enthroned between the martyrdoms of Peter and Paul. The other gives the central position to St Peter. On that face, Cardinal Jacopo Stefaneschi offers a miniature version of the painting to the saint. He was the patron who commissioned the larger object. The size of a figure carries meaning within the scene. The cardinal can be much smaller than the sacred person he approaches, even though they share the painted space. His little model repeats the structure of the larger triptych. The patron’s act of giving survives within the image, alongside the sacred figures he asked Giotto and his workshop to paint.