Supplementary Glossary Flashcards
1
Q
predella
A
Step or platform on which an altar stands (from ‘predel’ or ‘pretel’, Langobardic for “a low wooden platform that serves as a basis in a piece of furniture”).
In painting, the predella is the painting or sculpture along the frame at the bottom of a polyptych or multipanel altarpiece. In later Christian medieval and Renaissance altarpieces, where the main panel consisted of a scene with large static figures, it was normal to include a predella below with a number of small-scale narrative paintings depicting events from the life of the dedicatee. Typically there would be three to five small scenes, in a horizontal format.
