Saints Peter and Jerome

Antonio Vivarini's Saints Peter and Jerome at the National Gallery, London, painted around 1443, reflects the leading role of the Vivarini family workshop in Venetian painting during the mid-fifteenth century. Antonio was the eldest of the Vivarini painters and established the family's reputation for richly colored devotional works. 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 two saints are rendered in Antonio Vivarini's characteristic vivid palette with elaborate decorative patterning, the gold ground and rich colors reflecting the Venetian taste for ornamental splendor in devotional painting.