The Westminster Retable, the oldest known altarpiece in England made of panel painting, is thought to have been created in the 1270s for Westminster Abbey by a group of Plantagenet court artists, most likely for the high altar. It is believed that Henry III of England gave it as portion of his Gothic renovation of the Abbey. The artwork was only preserved because it was integrated into furniture between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries, and the most of it can no longer be restored. With funding from the Getty Foundation and the Heritage Lottery Fund, the Cambridge-based Hamilton Kerr Institute started a six-year project to cleanse and protect what was left of the work in 1998. Once finished, it spent four months in 2005 on show at the National Gallery in London before being transported back to Westminster Abbey, where it was currently on view at the museum. The retable is painted on multiple linked oak panels measuring 959 x 3330 mm utilising thin colour glazes in linseed oil over gessoed surfaces. With six major flat panels and various minor wooden components, the structure is intricate. In order to replicate the lavish metalwork of goldsmiths found on some surviving retables and shrines on the Continent, as well as the now-destroyed Shrine of Edward the Confessor installed in the Abbey in 1269, the retable is divided into five sections by gilded wooden arcading, with pastiglia relief work, elaborate glass inlays, inset semi-precious stones, and paste gemstones. The painting is of exceptionally good quality, and judging by the excellent detail and several stylistic elements, it was most likely created by an artist accustomed to working on illuminated manuscripts. No accommodations were made for more popular taste since the intricate images were placed in a location on the high altar where they could only be seen by officiating clergy [Information-Credit : Westminster_Retable, Wikipedia; Wikipedia-Link:: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westminster_Retable ] [Image: One of the pieces of the altarpiece that is better preserved -- The Feeding of the Five Thousand] [The Work (Image) is a faithful photographic reproduction of a two-dimensional, public domain work of art. The work (Image) is in the public domain in its country of origin and other countries and areas where the copyright term is the life of author plus 70 years or fewer. The photographic reproduction is also considered to be in the public domain in the United States.] [Image-Source-Link : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Westminster_400.jpg ] #Art
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