Ornament & Illusion

Book excerpt: The work of Carlo Crivelli (c.1435-c.1495), one of the most original artists of the Italian Renaissance, is well represented in the art museums of North America. Although much admired by collectors, artists, and designers in the 19th and early 20th centuries, he has until recently been largely written out of the history of early Renaissance art, is little known to the public, and outside of some rare instances in Italy, has never been the focus of a monographic exhibition. The book, accompanying an exhibition at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston, will reevaluate Crivelli s provincial status, presenting him as an experimental artist who provided an alternative to the influential new models of modern painting associated with Florence. He was an artist who aimed to dazzle through a repertoire of spectacular pictorial effects that combined luxuriant ornamental display with bravura illusionism the latter entailing a sophisticated, witty, and sometimes unsettling play with the limits of frames and fictive space.