The Death of the Virgin

Starnina (Gherardo di Jacopo) · 1405–10

Medium

Tempera on panel

Original size

43.6 × 67.6 cm (17 1/8 × 26 5/8 in.); Framed: 44.5 × 67.4 cm (17 1/2 × 26 1/2 in.)

Currently held

Art Institute of Chicago

Movement

Italian Renaissance

Painted at the turn of the fifteenth century, this luminous altarpiece panel places the Virgin at the center of a gathered company of apostles, rendered with the tender gravity that defines the best of late Florentine Gothic devotional art. Gherardo di Jacopo, known as Starnina, was one of the most traveled and technically accomplished painters of his generation. Trained in the Florentine tradition of Agnolo Gaddi, he spent formative years in Spain — working in Valencia and Toledo — before returning to Florence around 1401, bringing with him a refined sense of spatial depth and an unusually supple handling of drapery. His figures carry weight without heaviness, and his palette manages to feel both jewel-bright and restrained at once. Starnina is documented as a member of the Arte dei Medici e Speziali, the Florentine guild that enrolled painters, and contemporary records place him among the most sought-after masters of his day before his relatively early death around 1413. This hand-painted oil reproduction translates the warmth of the original tempera — its deep crimsons, soft golds, and the quiet intensity of each mourning face — into a medium that rewards close looking on any wall, in any light.