Duccio’s Maestà
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The theme of the Madonna in art history spans the post-Carolingien times to the 19th century. Nearly any artist associated with the Roman Catholic church in one way or another created images of the Madonna and child for adoration in churches or the private sphere. The Sienese school in the 12th to 13th centuries saw an explosion of representations as the models shifted from a heavily Byzantine form to the definitive Italian form. The flat schematic and expressionless face of the Virgin transformed into the more natural shape with depth and expressions of tenderness between the mother and child. In the majestic Maestà of Duccio di Buoninsegna, one of the first great masters born about 10 years before Giotto, the Virgin sits on a white throne inlaid with polychrome marble in eight registers of varying height in addition to being intricately carved and covered with a sumptuous golden cloth. The throne is surrounded by adoring angels each wearing a jeweled diadem and who rest their chins on their arms as they gaze, spellbound, at her beauty and that of the child. Her hand gently caresses the child’s chest, preventing him from falling off of her lap, her other hand caressing his knee. This is a very precocious representation of depth and rendered in a supremely subtle manner. Her eyes look at us but hide a small melancholy which we perceive in her closed but unsmiling lips. There is still a simplification of her eyebrows coming together to form the bridge of her nose in a “T” which captures the light coming in from the viewer’s left also illuminating her slightly blushed cheek as well as the fabric of her tunic resting on her knee. As the lowest figures placed next to the throne, are two angels, one of which looks at the light source and then Saint John the Evangelist while John the Baptist looks directly at us, imploring us to join him in worshiping this image. The Virgin is wearing a blue cape with golden hems and over a red gown and a white scarf on her white skin. The inside of her cape is scarlet red and is folded over underneath the seated infant creating a diagonal movement back to the two central figures. Christ is portrayed in a pink blanket over a transparent body cloth, this outer layer has golden crosses woven into it, prefiguring the sacrifice to come decades later. The child looks at us directly, his beautiful golden hair full of life in its curls and yet, like his mother, his look is one of maturity and foreboding, his right hand clutches his blanket to his chest while his left hand chastely holds the fabric to his waist. Despite the realism displayed in the representation of the Virgin and child, there is a strange morphing of the child’s blanket which becomes the Virgin’s outer garment on the extreme right side of the painting. The green tone in the halos is the underpainting and gesso where the gold flake has worn off after the years. Along the bottom of the diais on which the throne is raised runs an inscription in Latin that means, “Holy Mother of God, be thou the cause of peace for Siena and life to Duccio because he painted thee thus”
This central scene is surrounded on the left and right by more saints and prophets and the rear of this massive piece featured 43 scenes from the Life of the Virgin and the Life of Christ. Under the central scene is the pradella with scenes from the childhood of Christ and prophets (always identifiable as they are carrying scrolls with prophecies on them)
