Competitive Devotions: The Venetian Scuole Piccole as Donors of Altarpieces in the Years around 1500

Abstract

As patrons of art, the Venetian scuole, or lay devotional confraternities, are normally associated with the narrative cycles that some of them commissioned for their meetinghouses. But, as this article seeks to show, the scuole were even more important as donors of church altarpieces, especially in the six decades between Giovanni Bellini's Saint Vincent Ferrer Polyptych (ca. 1465) and Titian's Death of Saint Peter Martyr (ca. 1526-30). On the basis of an appendix of examples, some of which are identified as scuola commissions for the first time, their achievement is assessed, their various motives as patrons are analysed, and the relationship between some of the most important commissions is discussed.

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Notes on contributors

Peter Humfrey

Peter Humfrey is the author of a monograph on Cima da Conegliano (Cambridge, 1983) and has published articles in the Art Bulletin, the Burlington Magazine, Arte veneta, and other journals. He was the winner of the Porter Prize of 1980, and is currently working on a book on the altar-piece in Renaissance Venice. [Department of Art History, University of St. Andrews, St. Andrews, Scotland, KY16 9AL]