Umbria or Marche, Croce dipinta, late 13th century. Tempera and metals on panel. The Frascione Collection.

BOSTON - The closing centuries of the Middle Ages in Italy witnessed profound transformations in the art of painting. New techniques gave way to an expanded repertoire of formats and artistic styles; patronage systems and workshop practices evolved in tandem with reassessments of the merit of authorship; and long-standardized criteria for value and authenticity in representation were steadily redefined. These paradigm-shifting developments—exemplified in Early Italian painting—ramified into the academic study and connoisseurship of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, creating a blurry line between the Medieval period and early modernity that has proven difficult to shake.

Medieval | Renaissance foregrounds this distinction, exhibiting nineteen rarely shown works from the Frascione Collection in Florence, founded in 1893. Featuring devotional icons, altarpiece panels, narrative scenes, and portraits from the late thirteenth through early sixteenth centuries, the exhibition charts innovations in the craft and conceptualization of painting in Italy after 1300. These paintings represent a liminal epoch between the later Middle Ages and the Early Renaissance, whose works and artists are shared—even “claimed”—by two divergent art historical fields, “Medieval” and “Renaissance,” with their own cultures, questions, and interpretive methods.

Organized by the McMullen Museum, Medieval | Renaissance has been underwritten by Boston College with major support from the Patrons of the McMullen Museum.

Curated by John Lansdowne and Stephanie C. Leone, specialists in Medieval and Renaissance art, respectively, the exhibition invites viewers to contemplate the works through two distinct art historical lenses and from either side of a long-standing and long-debated disciplinary divide.

Nicolò di Pietro (fl. 1394–1430), Lamentation, ca. 1420. Tempera and gold on panel. The Frascione Collection.

Giovanni di ser Giovanni Guidi (called Scheggia) (1406–86), Birth Salver (desco da parto), 1486. Tempera and gold on panel. The Frascione Collection.

Evangelista di Pian di Meleto (1458–1549) (attributed), Saint Sebastian, ca. 1498–1502. Oil on panel. The Frascione Collection.

Master of the Scandicci Lamentation, Madonna and Child, ca. 1510–20. Tempera on panel. The Frascione Collection.

Giovanni Bellini (ca. 1431–1516), Portrait of Gabriele Veneto (Gabriele della Volta), ca. 1498–99. Oil on panel. The Frascione Collection.

Master of Barberino, Enthroned Madonna and Child with Bishop Saint and Saint Michael Archangel, ca. 1365. Tempera and gold on panel. The Frascione Collection.

Workshop of Domenico Ghirlandaio (1448–94), Madonna and Child, late 15th century. Tempera on panel. The Frascione Collection.

Bartolo di Fredi (c. 1330–1410), Saint James the Lesser, mid- to late 14th century. Tempera on panel. The Frascione Collection.