Duccio's "Maesta" in Siena

One hot Kansas summer some 40 years ago, I took a summer school class on Medieval and Renaissance Art at Wichita State University. We met in a darkened amphitheater in McKnight Art Center with slides projected on the screen above and in front of us. Yes, slides! Kodachrome slides, I presume. Mira Merriman, the late great scholar, told me I had an unfair advantage over other students because I was Catholic! When I heard Elizabeth Lev talk about her book on Counter-Reformation Art and the Church last summer at Newman University, I thought of Professor Merriman.

We discussed at least one other Duccio Madonna with its early Renaissance attempts at perspective and dimension--and also the understanding that the image/painting itself was not the object of worship, but an image to honor the Blessed Virgin Mary, thank her for prayers answered, and inspire veneration of her as the Mother of God (that's where my "unfair advantage" came in!).

But on this date, 708 years ago, Duccio's great altarpiece Maesta was brought in procession to the Duomo of Siena. The Catholic Encyclopedia describes the event and the impact this painting would have, on Duccio's career and religious art:

But it was in 1311 that Duccio achieved his principal work, the glory of which is destined to remain traditional, the great reredos for the high altar of the Siena cathedral. This panel, removed in the fifteenth century, may now be seen in the museum of the Opera del Duomo. The day of its installation was observed as a public feast; shops were closed and bells were rung and the people of the city, carrying lighted candles, solemnly escorted the picture from the artist's residence at the Porta Stalloreggi to the cathedral. This painting was indeed a national masterpiece and in this regard is comparable only to the reredos by Van Eyck in Flemish painting. The two sides represent the two Testaments of the school. The back comprises twenty-six scenes from the life of Jesus between the entry into Jerusalem and the Ascension. The steps, now taken apart, were decorated with twenty other scenes representing Christ's childhood, and His miracles, and the life of the Virgin. In fact, the theme was the same as that treated by Giotto in 1305 in the Arena of Padua. But Duccio consulted Byzantine formularies only, and his compositions resemble the famous miniatures of the "Evangelistarium" of Rossano, or those of the great Benedictine school of Mont' Amiata. However, apart from his perfect taste in colour and in style, Duccio excelled in the essentially Greek elegance of his portrayal of ordinary life. He abounds in genre pictures as pure as some of the selections in the Anthology. The scene of "Peter before the High-Priest", the dialogue of the holy women with the angel at the Sepulchre, and the "Pilgrims of Emmaus" are models of poetic conception expressed in a familiar, true-to-life, lyric fashion. On the front of the great panel is the "Madonna Maestà" (Majesty), which is in reality the "Madonna de' Ruccellai" more amply, richly, and harmoniously developed. Never did Byzantine painting attain greater plasticity of expression. But here the form is animated by a new sentiment, a tenderness that manifests itself in the distich engraved on the step of the Virgin's throne: --

MATER SANCTA DEI, SIS CAUSSA SENIS REQUIEI
SIS DUCCIO VITA, TE QUIA PINXIT ITA. (Holy Mother of God, give peace unto Siena; obtain for me that, as I have painted Thee so fair, I may live eternally.)

[The reredos of Van Eyck in Flemish painting referred to above is The Adoration of the Mystic Lamb--I always wanted to see it in person in Ghent but Mark and I did not get to travel to Belgium a third time!]

At Phaidon.com, there's a post with a curiously inaccurate title "The altarpiece that helped art break away from the church". Since the Catholic Church continued to be the major patron of art and as patron exerted influence on what was created and how it was created in the late Middle Ages and Renaissance--through to the Council of Trent and the Counter-Reformation--that assertion is a stretch. It's a stretch that's not supported by this sentence:

This event was as (sic) more a religious event than an artistic one, though perhaps this distinction would have been less clear in the minds of that crowd, as artistic creation was so closely allied to the church at this point.

It's more accurate to say that Duccio's Maesta altarpiece demonstrates a shift away from Byzantine iconography. That's really what the article conveys as it concludes:

Maestà may look stilted in comparison to later works by Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo and Raphael yet by shifting away from the stiffer Byzantine styles, Duccio showed the way for these later artists.

Nevertheless, it's a wondrous religious and artistic event we remember seven centuries later. The sad note is that the altarpiece is not in situ at the Duomo, but parts of it are scattered around the world in different museums!

Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us who have recourse to thee!

May Mira Merriman rest in peace.

Image Credit (public domain): detail of the Maesta