Tabernacle de Berlin

This tabernacle by Grifo di Tancredi, a Florentine painter active in the late 13th and early 14th centuries, exemplifies the small-scale devotional objects that played a crucial role in Gothic private piety. Created around 1302, the tabernacle format — a central image flanked by painted shutters — served as a portable shrine for domestic prayer. Grifo di Tancredi worked in the circle of Cimabue and the early Giottesque painters, representing the generation that witnessed Florence's transformation into Italy's leading center of painting.

Painted in egg tempera with gold leaf on panel, the tabernacle features the characteristic pointed Gothic arch framing and tooled gold backgrounds of late Duecento Florentine work. The figural style shows the transition from late Byzantine to early Gothic, with elongated proportions and formal, hieratic poses.