Demidoff Altarpiece

Carlo Crivelli's Demidoff Altarpiece, painted around 1476 and now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, is named after the Russian Demidoff family who once owned it. This multi-panel altarpiece demonstrates Crivelli's distinctive late Gothic sensibility, with elaborate gold grounds and his characteristic hyper-detailed decorative elements. Crivelli worked exclusively in the Marche region of central Italy, where his intensely devotional and elaborately ornamented style found an appreciative audience.

Crivelli's technique features his signature precise line work, brilliant tempera colors on gold ground, and the obsessive decorative detail—garlands of fruit, elaborate textiles, jeweled accessories—that make his altarpieces unmistakable.