A Review: Devotion By Design at Britain's National Gallery

THE TELEGRAPH
By Richard Dorment

The Birth of the Virgin , about 1440, Master of the Osservanza 

UNITED KINGDOM - Selected entirely from pictures in the permanent collection, the National Gallery’s exhibition of Italian 14th- and 15th-century altarpieces is so beautiful that it would be easy to miss the breathtaking audacity of the installation. An altarpiece is a specific kind of religious image because it was made to hang in a church where it served to create or intensify spiritual experience. To transfer an altarpiece to an art gallery is to change its meaning by shifting the viewer’s attention to questions of authorship, date, school and stylistic development. This installation reminds us that the pictures once hung above a place that for a Catholic could not be more sacred – the altar on which the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist is made manifest through the actions of the priest during mass. Devotion by Design reverses this process by asking why these works of art were made, why they took the form they did, how they functioned and what that meant theologically.  Devotion by Design’ until Oct 2; 'Treasures from Heaven’ until Oct 9. [link]