La lunga vita materiale delle pale d’altare composite
Daniele Rivoletti
Like most polyptychs and pale executed in the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance, composite altarpieces (i.e. painted altarpieces with a sculpted image in the central compartment of the main register) had a troubled material life between the 16th and 19th centuries. However, their secular history is distinguished by certain peculiarities. Interestingly, the fate of the sculptures was not the same as that of the paintings: the former often remained in their original contexts for a long time; they retained a predominantly religious function and were therefore physically adapted to liturgical changes; the paintings, on the other hand, attracted the interest of collectors and were materially modified to suit their new functions. The present work includes case studies, mainly from central Italy, and analyses the obstacles that the material life of these particular works pose to the art historian’s work today. It also draws some methodological lines of research.