Lot 600 | Sienese School | Madonna with the Christ Child

SIENESE SCHOOL

Title: Madonna with the Christ Child.
Punched gold background.
Date: ca. 1290-1300.
Technique: Tempera and gold on wood.
Measurement: 39 x 31cm.
Frame/Pedestal: Framed.
Provenance:
Private ownership, Germany since the 1960s.

The present work is a small devotional panel of exquisite quality from the Sienese school of the late 13th century. It stands in a convincing dialogue with the Madonna and Child by Duccio di Buoninsegna in the Metropolitan Museum in New York, better known as the Stroganov Madonna or the Stoclet Madonna, which was painted between 1290 and 1300. The painting was probably created within the environment or perhaps in the workshop of the great Sienese artist and was created after many of the new impulses that Duccio gave to Tuscan painting. Apart from the balustrade separating the two figures from the viewer, the painting faithfully follows the composition of the Stroganov Madonna. Similar to the Stroganov Madonna, the panel is considered an independent object that was not part of a diptych.
It shows Madonna exchanging a glance with her young son who is holding out his hand to remove her veil. Very important is the emphasis the artist - quoting Duccio - places on touch: the child's reaching out for the mother's veil, her left index finger folded under a fold of the robe, the way Christ's right foot gently touches the mother's wrist and sleeve.
French ivory probably inspired the motif of the child grasping the mother's veil, and perhaps the veil falling in elegant folds. Such details give the painting a sensory quality that also refers to the devotional practice of the 13th century. By creating a new spatial and physical relationship with the viewer, the paintings of the Sienese School encourage precisely this kind of mindset.