RE: 15thc perception on swallowtail merlons?
Pierre Dumont Himself > 19-07-2026, 09:06 PM
So far we've only sratched the surface. I'm sure there are many more scattered across the hundreds of art museums in Northern Italy. Frescoes are easier to find for three reasons: they are tied to specific workshops, the imagery is more predictable, with recurring saints and "cycles", and they are more widely distributed in time and space: paintings are rare outside of the big cities and typically later than the last quarter of the 14th century, whereas high-quality frescoes can be found in mountain churches and roadside chapels.
A workshop operating mostly within a single province could cover dozens of churches over a few decades, and many of these churches would later hire the same workshop, or a differnt one, to expand the existing decoration. There may have been 2-3 contemporary workshops in an average province at any given time, and about a third to a half of the frescoed churches/chapels/annexes were new (do not cite me on this, though, the point is that there was a lot of new construction and art commissions were a staple side dish). Sculptures and sacred objects followed a similar pattern of patronage, but in the case of altar paintings, only one was needed at a time, and they were only common in big cities until the Renaissance. During the Renaissance, the same process unfolded with newer workshops, or the old ones adopting newer techniques, and concomitantly, with newer churches or the old ones commissioning new art. Most churches were never too poor to afford the whole package, so they could only compete by hiring the biggest names in Renaissance art. This would go on until about the seventeeth century, when bishops became more proactive in decorating churches, and unfortunately also in erasing older art. In fact, many of the Gothic frescoes we know and love were covered with plaster or hidden behind altars and other furniture in order to save them from the bishop's plans. After the mid-eighteenth century, there was little church construction outside of industrializing suburbs, but this was not true for earlier periods: you could find a Gothic church and a Baroque one in one village, and Romanesque church next to a Renaissance one in the neighboring village. Oftentimes, the same church had multiple architectural layers, occasionally corresponding to different art styles, but each and every church possesses an art collection spanning multiple centuries. Only Romanesque and earlier frescoes were comparatively rare when they were made, and also less likely to survive.
The head of a workshop often trained in multiple locations, thus incorporating techniques from multiple schools. This also made them more adaptable in the later part of their careers, whereas their associates often painted in a "mannerist" style similar to their master's. As a result, workshops rarely lasted more than two generations. Paolo Veneziano and his successors could afford to make "only" paintings because they were the leaders of the Venetian School. He had all the best commissions.