Tables & Tavole: Vasari, Panel Painting and the Late Renaissance Refectory

The Department of Art and Music Histories is pleased to welcome Sally Cornelison, Professor of Art History, Director of the Florence Graduate Program in Italian Renaissance Art, as part of AMH’s colloquium series.

Between 1539 and 1566, Italian Renaissance artist, architect, and artist biographer Giorgio Vasari received five commissions to embellish ecclesiastical dining spaces. The focus of this presentation is three altarpiece-like panel paintings Vasari created for the refectory of San Michele in Bosco on the outskirts of Bologna, which mark the first, but not the last, time he grafted the altarpiece type to an early modern refectory. His stylistically mannered and iconographically innovative Bolognese images both presaged and informed Vasari’s later cohesive altarpiece ensembles and mark a significant departure from the frescoed Last Supper scenes typically associated with early modern refectories.