Note on the Survival of Thirteenth-Century Panel Paintings in Italy

In a recent study, I made the statement that a very high percentage of the paintings originally produced in Italy in such remote periods as the twelfth and thirteenth centuries must be considered lost, and that although there is no scientific basis for calculating the losses, an informed estimate of 70 to 80% is not, especially if manuscript illustrations are taken into account, too high.1 My purpose in making this statement was to drive home the fact that a purely inductive method of art history cannot possibly yield satisfactory historical syntheses, and that it must be complemented – indeed preceded – by a total cultural apparatus from which deductions can be made.