This thesis is a monographic study of the life of Domenico Veneziano (†1461) and his Florentine public works. It aims both to bring the study of Veneziano’s fragmentary oeuvre up to date and to correct the persistent and prevailing historiographic tendency to interpret his painting within a teleological narrative of progress in naturalism and perspective. The thesis opens with a chapter on Veneziano’s education and arrival in Florence. The following four chapters each deal with one of his public commissions. Chapter 2 addresses the fresco cycle in the main chapel of Sant’Egidio, the church of the hospital of Santa Maria Nuova. The third chapter focuses on the Carnesecchi tabernacle, which was at the homonymous Canto (street junction) near Florence’s Cathedral. Chapter 4 deals with Veneziano’s masterpiece, the Saint Lucy altarpiece, realised for the main chapel of the parish church of Santa Lucia de’ Magnoli. The fifth and final chapter concerns the fresco with Saints John the Baptist and Francis in the Cavalcanti chapel in Santa Croce.

Veneziano’s works are not studied in isolation. They are instead examined within their particular contexts, considered here to be inseparable from the works themselves. This context-driven approach is guided by an interest in better understanding not only Veneziano’s work but also some more general themes, which are addressed in the conclusion. The first of these is the experimentation with perspective that took place in mid-fifteenth-century Florence. The second is the dialogue between old and new, tradition and innovation, that was created when artworks were commissioned for contexts that were not pristine. A third, closely related theme, is the concept of innovation itself and the ways in which Veneziano’s works call into question our often-inflexible definition of it.