The Descent into Limbo: Roundel above Centre Panel

Giovanni dal Ponte was a Florentine painter working in the first half of the fifteenth century who bridged the late Gothic workshop tradition and the new spatial experiments of his contemporaries Masaccio and Fra Angelico, largely without absorbing their revolutionary innovations. The Descent into Limbo as a roundel positioned above a centre panel indicates it functioned as the crowning element of a polyptych, probably with a Resurrection as the main image below. The subject — Christ releasing the Old Testament patriarchs from Limbo — was the standard upper register image for Easter altarpieces.

Dal Ponte paints in tempera with the gold-ground convention still intact, using the roundel format to create a concentrated burst of action around Christ's figure. His palette retains the jewel-bright crimsons and blues of the International Gothic, softened only slightly toward more naturalistic shadow.