The Art of Devotion opened on September 17 with a gallery talk and small reception. Ken Pohlman, the museum’s designer, had subtly transformed the Johnson Gallery into a series of archways and porticoes, recalling a Renaissance courtyard ringed by rooms. The sightlines of the gallery gave the illusion of being in a private home, surrounded by splendid displays of art.

Smith Abbott stood in the center of the gallery with the careful poise of a ballet dancer. She talked with expressive hands. Here, lecturing, she was in her element. She started from the beginning of the story. She told the audience about the mystery of attribution, about Grassi’s gallery, about San Miniato al Tedesco.

She said, “One of the goals of this exhibition is to show devotional panel paintings as quotidian objects, which is exactly how patrons at the time understood them. They had dynamic functions: They were signs of wealth. They were symbols of taste. They were reflections of status. It seems paradoxical to us but it wasn’t a paradox to them. I want to illuminate—” She paused and looked at the audience out of the corner of her eye, like she was giving up a really good secret. “—the thingyness of the objects.”

There was no erudition or pretention, no technical curatorial jargon, no inaccessible discussion of connoisseurship. The audience laughed, but also nodded—the slow nod one uses to indicate sudden insight and understanding.

Emmie Donadio appeared at Smith Abbott’s side and handed her a bouquet of coral-colored roses. Donadio beamed and Smith Abbot beamed back, tall and confident. For just a moment, Lippo d’Andrea’s Virgin and Child Enthroned wasn’t the leading lady in the gallery.

Kevin Redmon will graduate from Middlebury this spring. He wrote “Grape Expectations” in the spring 2009 issue of the magazine.

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