Triptych

Bartolomeo Vivarini's Triptych is a generic title indicating an altarpiece in the standard three-panel format that was his primary vehicle for major commissions throughout his active period from the 1450s to the 1490s. Vivarini's triptychs represent the late flowering of the gold-ground polyptych in Venetian painting — a form that his younger contemporaries the Bellini brothers were in the process of transforming into the unified, naturalistic altarpiece. Vivarini's conservative clients, often from the Venetian periphery or Adriatic communities, continued to prefer the hierarchical, jewel-like splendor of his gold-ground panels over the spatial experiments of the newer mode.

Vivarini's triptych technique builds each compartment as a self-contained image: gold ground tooled with elaborate patterns, saints placed on marble plinths in front of the ground, drapery rendered in the bright, saturated tempera colors characteristic of his school — crimson, cerulean blue, forest green.