Saints Peter, Romuald, Catherine and Jerome

Giovanni dal Ponte's Saints Peter, Romuald, Catherine, and Jerome, painted around 1422 for the National Gallery, formed part of a multi-panel altarpiece for a Florentine church. Giovanni dal Ponte was a competent Florentine painter who maintained the decorative traditions of the late Trecento in a period of rapid artistic change. This work belongs to the Early Renaissance, the transformative period in European art when painters first applied mathematical perspective, naturalistic figure modeling, and archaeological interest in antiquity to the inherited traditions of medieval devotional painting. The tension between Gothic grace and Renaissance structure gives art of this period a distinctive energy.

The four saints are arranged in pairs within the panel format, each identified by traditional attributes and rendered in Giovanni dal Ponte's characteristic combination of decorative gold ground and modestly naturalistic figure style.