EXHIBITION – The Shimmer of Gold: Giovanni di Paolo in Renaissance Siena, Los Angeles, Getty Center, 11 October 2016 – 8 January 2017.
Manuscript illuminator and panel painter Giovanni di Paolo was one of the most distinctive and imaginative artists working in Siena, Italy, during the Renaissance. Through recent technical findings, the exhibition reveals his creative use of gold and paint to achieve remarkable luminous effects in both media: paintings and illuminations.
This exhibition reunites several panels from one of his most important commissions—an altarpiece for the Branchini family chapel in the church of San Domenico in Siena—for the first time since its dispersal, and presents illuminated manuscripts and paintings by Giovanni and his close collaborators and contemporaries.
The Branchini Altarpiece has been studied by conservators and curators at the Getty Museum as part of a conservation partnership with the Norton Simon Foundation and the Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo, the Netherlands. The Pinacoteca Nazionale in Siena, the Burke Family Collection, James E. and Elizabeth J. Ferrell, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the Santa Barbara Museum of Art have generously lent related works of exceptional quality.