CONTINUOUS NARRATIVE

Continuous narrative: translation

   A technique used to depict several episodes of a story on one pictorial field. Masaccio's Tribute Money in the Brancacci Chapel at Santa Maria del Carmine, Florence (c. 1425), for instance, presents in three episodes the arrival of Christ and the apostles at Capernaum. Lorenzo Ghiberti was able to organize coherently the multiple scenes of the story of Jacob and Esau in his Gates of Paradise (1425-1452) for the Baptistery of Florence by utilizing this method. Fra Filippo Lippi also used a continuous narrative technique in his frescoes in the choir of Prato Cathedral (1452-1466).