Gothic Gold

• In Event: The Gothic Present and Renaissance Art II

Abstract

"Gothic" and "gold ground" are so familiar in conjunction, identifying a class of painted work on panel, as to have made the one term practically synonymous with the other. This paper, in tracing some of the striking trajectories of gold ground images as they are made and re-made beyond the later fifteenth century, drives these terms apart and questions the assumptions on which the epithet Gothic has been applied in sixteenth century and post-Renaissance criticism. In doing so it also asks when and why Gothic continues to cast a spell on, or through, the use of gold in painting. Is it possible, or desirable, to assert an alternative "Renaissance gold" or does attention to the diverse working of gold and gold effects in the decades around 1500 productively undermine both period constructs?

Author

• Alison J. Wright, University College London