DUCCIO di BUONINSEGNA. - Sienese painter. The first record of his activity is from 1278, the year in which the Commune of Siena paid him for the decoration of twelve chests that were to serve as containers for public records. But despite the modesty of these beginnings, he must have risen to fame quite soon even outside his city, if in 1285 the confraternity of the Laudesi of S. Maria Novella in Florence commissioned from him a large altarpiece which today criticism, with few exceptions, is by now almost unanimous in identifying with the monumental Madonna in the Rucellai chapel of that same church. From 1285 to 1295 he is several times recorded as a "painter of books," that is, as decorator of the covers of the registers of the Biccherna and the Gabella (financial offices of the Commune of Siena); in 1295, together with Giovanni Pisano and other masters, he gave advice on the construction of the fountain at Pian d'Ovile in Siena, and in 1302 he painted a panel, now lost, for the inner chapel of the Palazzo Pubblico.
On 9 Oct. 1308 the overseer of the Cathedral, Messer Jacopo di Gilberto Marescotti, commissioned from him the great panel painted on both sides, with predella and crowning section, to be placed on the high altar of the Cathedral: on this grandiose work, called the Maestà, D. labored uninterruptedly for 32 months, and when he had completed it, on 9 June 1311, a crowd of people together with the clergy and the signoria accompanied its transfer with great festivities from the artist's workshop, located on via Stalloreggi, to the Cathedral. In 1506 it was removed from the high altar of the Cathedral, and in 1795 the two faces were separated and placed in the chapels of S. Ansano and of the Sacrament, where they remained until 1881, when they were transferred to the museum of the Opera. Four panels of the crowning section have perhaps been lost, while of the little scenes of the predella two are lost and eight are preserved in London, in New York and in Washington. Some documents allude to the artist's financial insolvencies; in 1299 he suffered two minor convictions, for having failed to swear fidelity to the captain of the people and for not having enlisted with the city militia in the expedition against the barons of Maremma. He died between 1315 and 1318, and his wife Taviana survived him; of his eight children it appears that at least four were painters, but their activity is unknown to us.
The Maestà, besides being one of the greatest masterpieces of medieval painting, is also the only securely documented work of D., who thus wished to commemorate himself in an invocation written on the step of the Madonna's throne: MATER SANCTA DEI - SIS CAUSA SENIS REQUIET - SIS DUCIO VITA - TE QUIA DEFINNIT ITA. On the front, in fact, is depicted the Virgin with the Child enthroned, surrounded by twenty adoring angels, by St. Catherine of Alexandria, St. Paul, St. John the Evangelist, St. John the Baptist, St. Peter and St. Agnes. In the foreground kneel the four patrons of Siena, St. Ansano, St. Savino, St. Crescenzio and St. Vittore, while along the upper edge of the panel the busts of the other Apostles are lined up beneath little arches. The back is divided into twenty-six compartments illustrating the Passion of Christ, from the entry into Jerusalem to the appearance at Emmaus. The predella bears on the front seven little scenes of the infancy of Jesus, interspersed with six figures of prophets, and on the back ten episodes of the life of Christ: the panels that make up the crowning section illustrate the life of Mary after the Resurrection and the last appearances of Christ. The predella and the crowning section were probably finished after 1311: nevertheless the grandiose complex proves to be of a admirable stylistic homogeneity, and it must be held to have been entirely executed by the hand of D., with the exception of a few panels in the crowning section, where the painter perhaps availed himself of the help of a collaborator. The iconographic scheme of the little scenes, like that of the great composition of the front, is still of genuine Byzantine tradition: that Byzantine tradition reinvigorated between the 9th and 12th centuries, from the re-sprouting of spirits and forms of classicism, and which is reflected with exceptional refinement in the Tuscan painting of the 13th century. But D. imparts a new life, an immediacy, the sense of a truth humanly more profound to those venerable models, while his language is enriched and softened, also welcoming, for the first time in Italian painting, the modulated cadences of Gothic linearism. The Maestà represents the crowning of a complex stylistic evolution that begins with the Madonna of Crevole (Siena, museum of the Opera), by now almost unanimously recognized as a youthful work of D.; from 1285 is the already mentioned monumental Rucellai Madonna in Florence, and in 1288 D. - as has been demonstrated by very recent investigations - supplied the cartoons for the great circular stained-glass window of the choir of the cathedral of Siena: this is divided into eleven compartments, representing the four evangelists, the four patron saints of Siena, the entombment, the assumption and the coronation of the Virgin, in which some fundamental themes of the Maestà are seen anticipated. The stained-glass window, still preserved in situ, also constitutes the first great Italian creation in the field of the art of historiated stained glass. The small, exquisitely refined Madonna of the Franciscans (picture gallery of Siena, no. 20), owing to the highly developed Gothic taste of its line, belongs to a period somewhat more advanced than was believed until a short time ago, when it was placed at the beginnings of D.'s activity. Close to the Madonna of the Franciscans are placed the two Madonnas in the museum of Bern and the Stoclet collection of Brussels and the triptych of the National Gallery of London: and also antecedent to the Maestà is the Madonna of the gallery of Perugia. Two polyptychs (no. 47 and no. 28) in the picture gallery of Siena, where one notes - especially in the second - a very large participation of assistants, would document the last phase of the development of Duccio's taste, after the Maestà, while for other very remarkable paintings, such as for example the Madonna of the parish church of Badia a Isola, the attribution to D. is still much disputed. In the serene vision of this great master the poetry of Hellenistic naturalism lives again, transfiguring itself in the intimacy of the new Christian sentiment; in the language whereby the figures of his stories express themselves, the destinies of the whole subsequent Sienese school of painting are already fully revealed. - See plates CXXIII - CXXIV.
Bibliography7 works
Enzo Carli