History of Taste: Margarito d'Arezzo and a revolution in collecting | National Gallery

This painting is by Margarito d'Arezzo and was painted in the early 1260s, so it's one of the very earliest paintings in the National Gallery's collection. It's very important for showing the revolution in taste that happened under the first director, Sir Charles Eastlake, from the mid-19th century, because it shows the National Gallery being very innovative about trying to promote interest in a type of painting that had hitherto been overlooked and neglected. We know that it was painted by Margarito d'Arezzo because the artist signed his work at the bottom of the panel saying, Margarito d'Arezzo made me. It was a pioneering moment in Italian art because it both looked backwards, it's reminiscent of Byzantine icons, but it was forward-looking because of the inclusion of narrative scenes and a sense of perspective creeping in. You can see the Virgin's foot creeping over into our space. Charles Eastlake, as first director, was determined to broaden out the types of paintings that the public could see at the National Gallery. Hitherto, the trustees had been responsible for purchasing pictures and the story that was being told the public was about acknowledged masterpieces. Eastlake decided on the back of the findings of a government select committee of 1853 that the gallery should be a survey collection that would show the general public the history of painting right from its origins in the 1260s through to the current day. This is why Eastlake bought this painting in 1857 in order to fill out the story of art that was being told by the National Gallery. He wanted to start at the very beginnings so that the public could learn about how Italian art developed right up to the apogee as it was then perceived in the Victorian age to be the work of Raphael and his contemporaries. Eastlake had to justify his purchase, he himself didn't find it particularly pleasing and said it was rather ugly or to use his words unsightly, but he said rather that it was very important to have works like this from an historical point of view in order to show what was happening in the history of art over the ages.