The Madonna and Child

Nothing is known about the origins of this work, which was made by one of the most important fourteenth-century masters in Italy. A sculptor and architect, Tino was born in Siena and introduced to the craft by his father Camiano, as we see in the laudatory inscription on the base (Camainus Pater), and he worked in Pisa, then in Siena and Florence, and lastly in Naples, where he died in 1337. In this Madonna, a youthful work from his years in Pisa, Tino shows how he has moved away from the expressive pathos of Giovanni Pisano and how he prefers more tranquil rhythms and forms that are more rounded and made very elegant by the linear flow of the drapery, in a manner not dissimilar from Sienese painting of that time.