Coronation of the Virgin

By 1375, when Catarino painted this panel in Venice, the Coronation of the Virgin had become one of the favourite subjects for the top of an altarpiece. Christ sets the crown on Mary's head, the two of them seated together against a field of gold worked with punched patterns. It is a small panel, only about 89 by 58 centimetres, and it was never meant to stand alone. It was the middle of a larger altarpiece whose flanking figures have since been separated from it. Painters on the Italian mainland were beginning to soften their figures into the flowing line of the Gothic, but Venice held to the older gold-ground manner longer, and Catarino gives his Virgin and Christ a little more weight and roundness while keeping the tradition intact. The crown itself is the detail the whole panel is built around, the moment Mary is received in heaven.