Among the Gallery’s holdings of European art is a selection of important medieval and Byzantine paintings, sculpture, and functional objects in all media. These artworks range in date from the end of the first millennium to the late 16th century.
Byzantine-period highlights include two icons from the 15th and 16th centuries—one a disassembled, five-panel folding tabernacle—that are part of the famed Jarves Collection that came to Yale in 1868. These have only recently been recognized for their authorship and significance. Tino di Camaino’s Three Princesses relief, one of the Gallery’s masterpieces of medieval sculpture, incorporates Cosmatesque glass inlay in its background and is probably from a Neapolitan royal tomb of the early 14th century. Other notable works include large-scale wooden figural sculptures from Flanders, France, and Spain, carvings in marble, limestone, and alabaster, illuminated manuscripts, as well as one of the museum’s earliest cutout initials, a rare surviving example of 12th-century painting.
Laurence Kanter
Chief Curator and the Lionel Goldfrank III Curator of European Art
