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Madonna with Child

DuccioLate XIIIth century

Fondazione Musei Senesi

Fondazione Musei Senesi
Siena, Italy

The painting has been alternatively attribuited to the scholars by the workshop of one of the greatest Sienese artist, Duccio di Buoninsegna. The recent restoration has allowed to read it, even full of losses, without the old repaintings, so that it can be insert in the master's catalogue, especially in a crucial period of turning to the new Gothic language. The ancient Byzantine elements, such as the Virgin's maphorion - a sort of scarlet cape that covered the head and shoulders - and the glaring gilded illumination of her mantle, are combined with the then-novel solid consistency of the faces and of the blessing-giving baby's chubby body, wrapped in an elegant purple robe that soften its shape.

Details

  • Title: Madonna with Child
  • Creator Lifespan: 1255-1257 - 1318-1319
  • Creator Nationality: Italian
  • Creator Gender: male
  • Creator Death Place: Siena
  • Creator Birth Place: Siena
  • Date Created: Late XIIIth century
  • painter: Duccio di Buoninsegna
  • collocation: Buonconvento, Sacred Art Museum of the Arbia Valley, Province of Siena
  • Place Part Of: Province of Siena
  • Physical Dimensions: w49 x h68 cm
  • Artist Biography: Documentary information about the life of Duccio di Buoninsegna, the undisputed founder of the Sienese school of painting in the fourteenth century, is rare and fragmentary. Endowed with a lively and restless temperament uniting genius and recklessness, he was able to merge into a definitively personal style both the Byzantine tradition in which he was trained and the innovations in Florence learned during his apprenticeship in Cimabue’s workshop. All his paintings are characterized by a lively narrative sense, communicated in an agile, expressive language and by the refined sense of color which is one of the representative elements of Sienese art until the seventeenth century. All these features can be found in his masterpiece, the great altarpiece, painted on both sides with pictures of the Virgin and Child in Majesty and Episodes from the Life of Christ for the high altar of the Cathedral (1311), now in the Museo dell’Opera.
  • Type: tempera on panel
  • Rights: Comune di Buonconvento; Curia Arcivescovile di Siena, Colle di Val d'Elsa, Montalcino; Fondazione Musei Senesi
  • External Link: Fondazione Musei Senesi

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