From the 13th century onwards, Italian painters routinely used sculptures as sources for their paintings. They were perfectly still and so easier to work from than a real person draped in real clothing. The artist could observe for himself the way that light fell on the figures - much less easy if he were working from another painting. Relief sculptures had the added advantage of being composed like a painting rather than being fully three-dimensional statues.

While the Victoria and Albert Museum is preparing new Medieval and Renaissance Galleries, it has generously lent the National Gallery a group of sculptural reliefs, allowing us to explore the relationships between sculptures and paintings in Renaissance Italy and beyond.

The works on display will illustrate how reliefs influenced paintings (and sometimes the other way round), and show that colour was often as important for sculptors as for painters.

A free guide to the display is available on request from Gallery Information Desks.

Andrea della Robbia and workshop 'Virgin and Child', about 1475 © The Victoria and Albert Museum.

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