Dream of the Virgin

Simone dei Crocifissi's Dream of the Virgin, painted around 1365, depicts a rare and mystical subject in which the sleeping Virgin receives a prophetic vision — an iconography particularly associated with Bolognese Gothic painting. Simone was the leading painter in mid-fourteenth-century Bologna, where he developed an intensely devotional style influenced by both Tuscan innovations and the city's strong connections to Byzantine art. Now at the Society of Antiquaries of London, this unusual panel reflects the Bolognese taste for emotionally charged, theologically inventive devotional imagery.

Tempera and gold on panel with the distinctively expressive, somewhat archaic figural style characteristic of the Bolognese school. The mystical subject is rendered with a combination of Byzantine-derived gold patterning and the softer modelling absorbed from Tuscan sources.