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  • Madonna and Child
  • Madonna and Child
  • Madonna and Child

Duccio di Buoninsegna (Italian, act. by 1278, d. 1318)
Madonna and Child, ca. 1295–1300
Tempera and gold on wood, with original engaged frame; 11 x 8 1/8 in. (28.0 x 20.8 cm)
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Purchase, Rogers Fund, Walter and Leonore Annenberg and The Annenberg Foundation Gift, Lila Acheson Wallace Gift, Annette de la Renta Gift, Harris Brisbane Dick, Fletcher, Louis V. Bell, and Dodge Funds, Joseph Pulitzer Bequest, several members of The Chairman's Council Gifts, Elaine L. Rosenberg and Stephenson Family Foundation Gifts, 2003 Benefit Fund, and other gifts and funds from various donors, 2004 (2004.442)

Curator Comment

This exquisite picture defines a transforming moment in Western art. Departing from the Byzantine notion of painting as a symbolic image of a divine being, Duccio, the founder of Sienese painting, endowed his figures with a new humanity, exploring the psychological relationship between Mother and Child. Unquestionably, the master had looked closely at the work of his younger contemporary Giotto. The parapet, a pictorial device that relates the fictive space of the picture to the real space of the viewer, will become a common feature of Renaissance painting; here, it is a novelty. 

Few of Duccio's paintings survive: this panel was the last known work in a private collection and its acquisition transforms the Museum's presentation of the history of European painting. The damage along the bottom of the original frame is from candles lit before the picture, which was used for private devotion. 

Keith Christiansen, Jayne Wrightsman Curator, Department of European Paintings

Provenance

Count Grigoriy Sergeyevich Stroganov, Palazzo Stroganov, Rome, by 1904–d. 1910; his daughter, Princess Maria Grigorievna Scerbatov, and her children, Prince Vladimir Alekseevich and Princess Aleksandra Alekseevna, Palazzo Stroganov, 1910–all three d. 1920; Prince Vladimir's widow, Princess Elena Petrovna Scerbatov, and their children, Princess Olga Vladimirovna and Princess Maria Vladimirovna, Palazzo Stroganov, 1920–23; [Sangiorgi, Rome, 1923]; Adolphe Stoclet, Brussels, 1923–d. 1949; his son, Jacques Stoclet, Brussels, 1949–at least 1968; his widow, Mme Jacques (Anny) Stoclet, Brussels, until d. 2001, by descent to private collection, 2001-2004; sold through Christie's.

Bibliography

F. Masson Perkins, "The Sienese Exhibition of Ancient Art," Burlington Magazine 5 (1904), p. 582; Alessandro Bagnoli et al., Duccio: Siena fra tradizione bizantina e mondo gotico (Milan: Silvana, 2003), pp. 120, 129; Keith Christiansen, "The Metropolitan's Duccio," Apollo 165 (2007), pp. 40–47; Keith Christiansen, "Duccio and the Origins of Western Painting," The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 66, no. 1 (Summer 2008).

Related Links

Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History

Listen to a conversation between Philippe de Montebello and curator Keith Christiansen about this work of art.