The foremost Venetian painter of the fourteenth century, Paolo Veneziano (act. 1333–58) is regarded as the founder of the Venetian school of painting. This publication, and the exhibition it accompanies, reunites, for the first time, the dispersed components of two of his rare surviving altarpieces and presents them alongside contemporaneous objects in various media to demonstrate how the innovative and visually rich work of Paolo Veneziano engaged with fourteenth-century advances in manuscript illumination, ivory carving, textile production, and metalwork.

The foremost Venetian painter of the fourteenth century, Paolo Veneziano (act. 1333–58) is regarded as the founder of the Venetian school of painting. Paolo practiced his art within a culture enriched by Venice’s maritime economy, with materials and techniques coming to his native city from Byzantium, Africa, Persia, and Asia. His workshop received prestigious commissions in Venice and beyond, many of them for elaborate altarpieces composed of painted panels within intricately carved gilt-wood frames. This publication, and the exhibition it accompanies, reunites, for the first time, the dispersed components of two of the rare surviving altarpieces and presents them alongside contemporaneous objects in various media to demonstrate how the innovative and visually rich work of Paolo Veneziano engaged with fourteenth-century advances in manuscript illumination, ivory carving, textile production, and metalwork.