The Italian Collection

NOMA's Italian painting collection from the early Renaissance through the 18th Century is particularly distinguished. A group of panel paintings in tempera with gilded backgrounds, some as early as the 1300s, includes Bartolomeo Vivarini's resplendent altarpiece of the Coronation of the Virgin. Although oil painting was invented in the north of Europe, it was the Venetian painters who first understood the potential of this new technique for brilliance of color, light and texture. Portraits by Lorenzo Lotto and Tiepolo show off this virtuosity with oil paint, as well as an insight into the subjects of the portraits
   
that carries across the centuries. From Genoa comes Luca Cambiaso's sumptuous treatment of the female nude in the Allegory of Venus and Earthly Vanity. The melodrama of Death Comes to the Banquet Table by Giovanni Martinelli is heightened by the sharp contours and clarity of form that were typical of Florentine painting of the 17th Century.