Westminster Abbey’s Quattrocento Altarpieces

Abstract

\n Between 1935 and 1948, three devotional paintings, all Italian and from the fifteenth century, were installed in London’s Westminster Abbey. While these pictures are individually well known to art historians, it has yet to be asked how and why they came to be displayed in the modern church. This paper reconstructs that history and interrogates the motivations of those involved. It also asks what liturgical functions, if any, were assigned to these erstwhile Roman Catholic objects in their adopted Anglican surroundings. The findings show that a confluence of antiquarian sensibilities, a specific vein of Anglicanism, and patronal motivations that recall the original commissioning of these works of art, all came to bear on what were remarkable episodes in the afterlives of these pictures and in the history of Westminster Abbey.