

Koster presents a ground-breaking technical examination of Hugo's triptych and for the first time, readers can access all of the evidence in a high-resolution and easily-navigable form - and for a work of supreme historical importance. Painted in the Netherlands for a Florentine chapel, the altarpiece also reflects artistic exchange in the Fifteenth Century. Focusing on Hugo's masterpiece, the Portinari Altarpiece, Koster pictures the painter, his patron, and the wider public as a set of diverse forces fuelling this artist's achievements. This book identifies the artist's painterly procedures as well as the religious practices and hopes his painting served.


Hugely original, he exerted a massive influence, pushing the portrayal of volume, motion and light to its limits while exploring an inherited Christian iconography in profoundly new ways. Hugo van der Goes is a towering figure in the history of art.
