BOSTON – Metal of Honor: Gold from Simone Martini to Contemporary Art, on view at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum (ISGM) through January 16, 2023, explores how painters across centuries have used gold to honor and commemorate their subjects. The exhibition features works by legendary Renaissance master Simone Martini, juxtaposing his devotional paintings with portraits by contemporary artists – Titus Kaphar, Stacy Lynn Waddell and Kehinde Wiley.

Painter to popes, princes and scions of Renaissance dynasties in his native Siena (Italy) and Avignon (France), Simone Martini (about 1284-1344) transformed Western painting and Christian imagery with his novel compositions and masterful manipulation of gold, unequaled in Europe and well ahead of his time. The Gardner Museum has two masterpieces by Martini in its collection – Virgin and Child with Saints (about 1325) and Virgin and Child with Saints (about 1320). Obtained in 1897 and 1899 respectively, these are the first works by the artist acquired in the United States and the largest holding of any museum outside Italy.

In this exhibition, the Gardner’s works will be displayed for the first time with other paintings by Martini, highlighting his groundbreaking approach to gold. Brought together with contemporary portraits by Kaphar, Waddell and Wiley, the exhibition shines new light on gold as a metal of honor, a material of virtue, and a commodity of international finance, linking artistic practice and strategy past and present, and unpacking the connections between pioneering Renaissance devotional paintings and portraiture of our era.

The Gardner Museum’s exquisite Simone Martini devotional painting Virgin and Child with Saints will be joined by four other paintings by the artist on loan from museums across North America — the largest gathering of Martini’s oeuvre ever assembled in the U.S. The Virgin and Child (about 1320 – 1325, the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Mo.) — the same size and subject as the Gardner Museum’s painting and created around the same time — is another example of Martini’s groundbreaking use of gold and the sacred symbolism it evokes.

“This exhibition offers a unique opportunity, bringing together dazzling paintings by the legendary Renaissance artist Simone Martini with artistic legends of our time Titus Kaphar, Kehinde Wiley and Stacy Lynn Waddell,” said Nat Silver, curator of the Metal of Honor exhibition. “Masterworks past and present illuminate the allure of gold across centuries, exploring artists of unparalleled technical accomplishment who pushed the boundaries of painting to fashion new languages of honor and indices of virtue.”

The Gardner’s monumental five-panel Virgin and Child with Saints (about 1320), the largest and only intact example of a Martini altarpiece in an American collection, will be surrounded by eight contemporary portraits by Kaphar, Waddell and Wiley, who incorporate innovative uses of gold to commemorate and celebrate their secular subjects. Collectively, their works raise questions of representation and the role of portraiture in the perception of value. Martini’s altarpiece, originally created for a church in Orvieto (a small city north of Rome where the Catholic popes spent their summers), juxtaposed with these contemporary works, showcase the artists’ creative manipulations of gold to produce captivating images of virtue and achievement, then and now.

Three examples from Kehinde Wiley’s (American, b. 1977-) ICONIC series of Black men depicted as canonized saints, such as The Archangel Gabriel (2014, private collection) will be on display. Inspired by historical precedents, Wiley created these intimate portraits with gold leaf and oil on wood panel in brilliant gilt frames.

Three figurative works by Stacy Lynn Waddell (American, b. 1966-) that probe the contradictions and misperceptions of American culture through the allegory of her own personal history are also on view. Using experimental and alchemical processes, Waddell examines beauty and transformation, manipulating gold leaf to play with light, texture and luminosity. Waddell’s shimmering sheets of gold revealing figures beneath their surfaces include The Dawn of Our Kindred Sower of Parable (for Octavia E. Butler) (2020).

The exhibition also highlights two large-scale portraits by Titus Kaphar (American, b. 1976-) – My Loss (2020) and State Number Two (Dwayne Betts) (2019) – later works from his The Jerome Project (which expands into the museum’s Fenway Gallery with examples from the original 2014-15 series). Depicting faces of previously incarcerated men against a background of gold leaf, these works – measuring more than six feet tall – emphasize the physicality and visibility of Kaphar’s portrait subjects.

Additional selections from Titus Kaphar: The Jerome Project are on view in a separate exhibition. When searching for information about his estranged father, the artist discovered prison records and mugshots of 97 men sharing his father’s first and last name. The Jerome Project in the museum’s Fenway Gallery marks the presence of 15 of these Black men, and interrogates the absence of imprisoned persons from the national narrative. Drawing inspiration from religious paintings of centuries past, individuals are depicted against a background of gold leaf, with faces partially covered in tar, the height reflective of the length of time and impact of incarceration.

Visit the website of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum and see its dedicated page for Metal of Honor: Gold from Simone Martini to Contemporary Art.