Medieval Paintings for Sale

What medieval art covers

The medieval art of the Western world covers a vast scope of time and place, with over a thousand years of art in Europe and, at certain periods, in Western Asia and Northern Africa. It includes major art movements and periods, national and regional art, genres, revivals, the crafts of the artists and the artists themselves. That is a long stretch of history, and it is the reason a medieval group looks less uniform than a room of Impressionism.

The far end of the era is easier to date than the near end. Renaissance art emerged as a distinct style in Italy in about AD 1400, in parallel with developments in philosophy, literature, music, science and technology, so the 15th century is a border rather than a wall. Several works on this page sit on that border: they keep the subjects and the devotional purpose of the Middle Ages while the space behind the figures becomes the space of the new age.

Gold, haloes and what a reproduction can do

Haloes, gold ornament and a Virgin at the centre are what most people have in mind when they search for medieval paintings, and the images here deliver that. What a reproduction cannot do is fake the object itself. The originals were made as panels, altar furniture and devotional images for a church or a house, and they are now in a museum or a gallery where you look at them from behind a rope.

What our artists give you instead is the painting, in oil on canvas, in the size your wall takes. The drawing is squared up first, because a proportion error in a two figure composition cannot be repaired later. The colour is then built in thin layers, which is the only way the deep reds and blues of these pictures read correctly. When the surface is set it is varnished, photographed and sent to you for approval before it is packed. The van Eyck original is on oak; ours is on canvas, and we say so rather than pretending otherwise.

Before you order a medieval painting

What period counts as medieval here? The thousand years of European art before the Renaissance, which emerged as a distinct style in Italy in about AD 1400. Works from the fifteenth century that keep medieval subjects are included, and they are marked as the border they are.

Are these painted on wood like the originals? No. We work in oil on canvas, in seven sizes. The Arnolfini original, for example, is an oil painting on oak panel dated 1434, and the reproduction is a canvas version of that image rather than a copy of the object.

Is Byzantine art included? Yes, where the catalogue has it. Those images are tagged by style in our system and they belong to the same thousand year span, in Europe and in Western Asia.