Portinari Altarpiece

The Portinari Altarpiece or Portinari Triptych (c. 1475) is an oil-on-wood triptych painting by the Flemish painter Hugo van der Goes, commissioned by Tommaso Portinari, representing the Adoration of the Shepherds. It measures 253 x 304 cm, and is now in the Galleria degli Uffizi in Florence, Italy.

This altarpiece is filled with figures and religious symbols. Of all the late-fifteenth-century Flemish artworks, this painting is said to be the most studied.

The work was commissioned for the church inside of one of the largest hospitals in Florence, hospital of Santa Maria Nuova by the Italian banker Tommaso Portinari, a descendant of the hospital's founder. Portinari lived for more than forty years in Bruges as a representative for the Medici family's bank. Portinari himself is depicted on the left panel with his two sons Antonio and Pigello; his wife Maria di Francesco Baroncelli is shown on the right panel with their daughter Margarita. All, except Pigello, are accompanied by their patron saints: Saint Thomas (with the spear), Saint Anthony (with the bell), Mary Magdalen (with the pot of ointment) and Saint Margaret (with the book and the dragon). When the work arrived in Florence in 1483, it was installed in the Portinari family chapel where it was deeply admired by the Italian artists who saw it, many of whom sought to emulate it. A good example is the Adoration of the Shepherds (1485) which Domenico Ghirlandaio painted for the Sassetti Chapel in the church of Santa Trinita in Florence. However, the naturalistic depiction of the shepherds is already present in Andrea Mantegna's Adoration of the Shepherds (Metropolitan Museum, New York), which dates from around 1450.

The hospital of S. Maria Nuova in which the altarpiece was originally held, was built in 1285 by Folco Portinari. The hospital was founded with only twelve beds and by the fifteenth century it grew to house around two hundred of them. Because of the hospital's prestige and growth, the hospital became well known throughout Florence as well as many other cities in Europe. The hospital was built for charitable purposes, but later became part of the Portinari legacy that created honor for the family and its generations to come after Folco.

The timing of the commission for the Portinari altarpiece was during the peak of Tommaso Portinari's career while in Bruges around the 1470s. The enormous size and choice of artist of this altarpiece is a statement of the patron's wealth and power.

In the central panel, three shepherds fall to their knees before the child Jesus. Van der Goes painted these rustic characters very realistically. Kneeling angels surround the Virgin and the Child, who is not in a crib but lies on the ground surrounded by an aureole of golden rays. This unusual representation of the adoration of Jesus is probably based on one of the visions of Saint Bridget of Sweden.

In the background, van der Goes painted scenes related to the main subject: on the left panel, Joseph and Mary on the road to Bethlehem; on the central panel (to the right), the shepherds visited by the angel; on the right panel, the Three Magi on the road to Bethlehem. Hugo van der Goes used continuous narrative to show the same characters repeated in one painting. In the central panel, he sets the characters up in the background first. Here, the shepherds are seen with an angel over their heads. This scene is the Annunciation of the Shepherds where the angel comes to tell the shepherds of the news of Christ's birth. In the foreground of the central panel, the shepherds are seen now adoring Christ across from the Virgin Mary.

Because most triptych altarpieces are usually kept unopened, the Portinari Altarpiece would have been closed except for special occasions such as holidays and feast days when it would have been opened. The exterior of Hugo van der Goes's triptych has decorative depictions of the Annunciation scene. The artist Hugo van der Goes painted the figures of the Virgin Mary and of the Angel Gabriel in grisaille, meaning to paint it in a style that imitates sculpture. The two figures are placed in shallow niches. During the completion of this work in the Netherlands, to depict grisaille on the exterior of altarpieces was a tradition for artists. This tradition came from the Middle Ages, when sculpture was considered the chief medium for devotional art. In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, some places in Germany continued to see sculpture as superior and that it belonged in the middle of a folding altarpiece like the one by Van der Goes.