The Italian Renaissance in one Ashmolean room
This room brings together Italian paintings from the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, from Paolo Uccello to Titian by way of Giovanni Bellini — a collection that lets you trace, in a few steps, the evolution of painting in Tuscany, Umbria and the Veneto over nearly a century.
1. A night hunting scene, the painter's last known work
The Hunt in the Forest, painted by Paolo Uccello around 1470, shows a night hunt organized with almost obsessive perspectival rigor: hunters, horses and dogs shrink methodically toward a single vanishing point, deep in a dark forest lit by an almost unreal light. The elongated panel probably belonged to a marriage chest, or a set of paneling meant to be viewed at shoulder height rather than hung high on a wall.
It is Uccello's last known work; he died in 1475, a painter who remained fascinated by linear perspective his whole life, to the point that his contemporaries already described him as obsessed with this emerging discipline.
2. A Madonna still contested by three painters
The Virgin and Child with a View of Venice, known as the "Tallard Madonna," painted between 1506 and 1513, shows the Virgin and Child before a hazy landscape in which the campanile of St Mark's Square in Venice can be made out. Long attributed to Giorgione, the painting now carries a more cautious attribution, shared between Giorgione himself, his contemporary Sebastiano del Piombo, and the Venetian painter Giovanni Cariani — a debate still open, and a good illustration of how hard early sixteenth-century Venetian workshops make it to tell a master's hand from that of his close collaborators.
How much time
Two paintings, two different ways of questioning what we truly know about an old work of art — its construction for Uccello, its authorship for the Tallard Madonna.
- The Hunt in the Forest (Uccello) — 8 minutes.
- The Tallard Madonna — 6 minutes.
Sources and verification
Checked against the official notices of the Ashmolean Museum (ashmolean.org) and cross-checked with Wikipedia EN/FR.
- Ashmolean Museum — The Hunt in the Forest
- Wikipedia EN — The Hunt in the Forest
- Art UK — The Virgin and Child with a View of Venice (The Tallard Madonna)
- Wikipedia EN — Sebastiano del Piombo
Displays and room openings can change. Check the Ashmolean Museum website on the day of your visit before following a route.
Listen to the commentary in the gallery
This route gives you a thread to follow. In front of an artwork, CulturAll adds the audio commentary: photograph the work or its label, listen, then ask your questions.
