Devotional Panels as Sites of Intercultural Exchange

Abstract

The use of painted panels as visual counterparts to an individual’s or a family group’s practice of prayer admittedly was very common in the modern era, yet it would be misleading to consider such a phenomenon as the outcome of a very recent process and as something typical of Western religious experience. Indeed, painted panels of various forms and diminutive dimensions were used in different Christian traditions and in various periods from Late Antiquity through the Late Middle Ages and, in early modern times, they happened to be perceived as objects that could be easily involved in multifarious devotional practices, regardless of their owner’s confessional or denominational identity.