Duccio di Buoninsegna (c.1255-c.1319)
Madonna col Bambino (Madonna and Child)
c.1290–1300
Tempera and gold on wood, 27.9 x 21 cm
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
This lyrical work inaugurates the grand tradition in Italian art of envisioning the sacred figures of the Madonna and Child in terms appropriated from real life. The Christ Child gently pushes away the veil of his mother, whose sorrowful expression reflects her foreknowledge of his crucifixion. The beautifully modeled drapery enhances their three-dimensional, physical presence and the parapet connects the fictive, sacred world of the painting with the temporal one of the viewer. The bottom edge of the original frame is marked by candle burns. (MET)