| Rucellai Madonna | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Artist | Duccio di Buoninsegna |
| Year | 1285 (commissioned) |
| Type | Tempera and gold on panel |
| Dimensions | 450 cm × 290 cm (180 in × 110 in) |
| Location | Uffizi Gallery, Florence |
The Rucellai Madonna is a panel painting representing the Virgin and Child enthroned with Angels by the Sienese painter Duccio di Buoninsegna. The original contract for the work is dated 1285; the painting was probably delivered in 1286. The painting was commissioned by the Laudesi confraternity of Florence to decorate the chapel they maintained in the Dominican church of Santa Maria Novella (in 1591, the painting was moved to the adjacent, much larger Rucellai family chapel, hence the modern title of convenience). It was transferred to the Galleria degli Uffizi in the 19th century. The Rucellai Madonna is the largest 13th-century panel painting extant.
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Duccio, The Rucellai Madonna
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Duccio di Buoninsegna - Restauro della Maesta' Uffizi
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Дуччо, Мадонна Ручеллаи, 1285—1286 гг.
Transcription
[MUSIC PLAYING] SPEAKER 1: You know, the Florentines get all the credit. And it's important to remember that there was another major city in the 1300s that was also in Tuscany. It was another independent republic, and this is the Republic of Siena, with the capital city of Siena. And there was an enormously important and influential painter there whose name was Duccio, and so let's look at one of his most important paintings, the Rucellai Madonna. SPEAKER 2: We're looking at a painting of the Madonna holding the Christ Child surrounded by three angels on either side, and 12 feet high, so a very large painting of the Madonna. SPEAKER 1: Yeah, it's a huge painting. In fact, the Virgin Mary herself is twice the height, if not larger, than a human being. It's an altarpiece that's meant to be seen at a great distance within a huge church. SPEAKER 2: And there's so many decorative patterns here, on the throne. In the spaces in between the posts that make up the throne, we see reds and blues. And then we've got more patterning in the drapery behind the throne. SPEAKER 1: The characteristics that you're referencing are seen by our historians to be the definition of Sienese art of this time, highly decorative, highly patterned, and with a subtlety of color that we don't often seen in the Florentine. SPEAKER 2: First of all, Mary's whole body is in this lovely ultramarine blue, which was a very expensive paint. But the angels, you see purples, and greens, and pinks, and blues. SPEAKER 1: And they're subtle and prismatic in a way that we don't so much see in the flatter colors of the Florentine style. SPEAKER 2: It's hard to see that Mary's sitting in her throne. The throne itself is so flat. SPEAKER 1: It's almost a background against which she's seen. There's so much detail and so much decorative patterning, in the throne especially and in the cloth that drapes the throne, that its structure gets lost, because pattern, of course, does emphasize the two dimensional. You know, when I look at Sienese art, and especially the Rucellai Madonna, I tend to think of an artist who is so in love with the ability to create beauty that pattern and form tend to trump the overall representation and the emphasis on any kind of naturalism or any physicality. For instance, look at the Byzantine-influenced hands of Mary. Look how long those fingers are. It's almost as if the artist has gotten lost in the length of those fingers as they wrap around Christ's waist. SPEAKER 2: They're very beautiful, those hands. I'm thinking also about the amount of gold here. We see the disappearance of all of that gold through the 1300s into the 1400s. Here, the painting's value is largely in that ultramarine paint-- that was expensive-- and in the use of gold. And what happens during the Renaissance is that the artist himself is valued, the artist's skill becomes more valued. Not that Duccio's skill wasn't valued, but the value was also heavily in the materials that were used that were often dictated by the patron. SPEAKER 1: Now, the ultramarine blue that you're referencing was actually made of the semi-precious stone lapis lazuli. And during the Renaissance, the only mines that were available for lapis were in Afghanistan, still a remote place for us in the 21st century. One can only imagine how exotic and rare and difficult importing from Afghanistan would have been in the 1200s. SPEAKER 2: And here we have an enormous quantity of that color being used. SPEAKER 1: So this is, in some ways, ostentatious. In some ways, this is a painting that is broadcasting its value, its wealth, its importance. What's so interesting is this was a commission for the main altar in Santa Maria Novella in Florence, although it's by a Sienese artist. And Santa Maria Novella is the main Dominican church, that is, one of the mendicant orders, this order of begging monks, that had renounced worldly possessions. So there's this interesting kind of tension. We mentioned that this is called the Rucellai Madonna, and that's a later title. This painting was later moved away from the main altar in Santa Maria Novella and into the Rucellai Chapel, that is, the private chapel that was controlled by the Florentine family, the Rucellai. [MUSIC PLAYING]
History
The Rucellai Madonna is the earlier of the two works by Duccio for which there is written documentation (the other is the Maestà of 1308–11). The altarpiece was commissioned by the Compagnia dei Laudesi, a lay confraternity devoted to the Virgin, to decorate the chapel they occupied in the transept of the newly built Dominican church of Santa Maria Novella in Florence. The contract for the painting, dated 15 April 1285, is the oldest Italian document of its kind to survive. The contract states that Duccio was commissioned to paint a panel depicting the Virgin and Child and "other figures,” for which he was to be paid 150 lire. It enjoins the artist to work on no other commissions while completing the altarpiece, and specifies that the entire work must be painted by Duccio alone without workshop assistance. The contract also requires the artist to pay for and use ultramarine blue for the Virgin's robe and real gold leaf for the background. The framed panel itself—the largest of the dugento—was supplied by the Laudesi. The patron had the right of refusal.[1]
In the 16th century, the art historian Giorgio Vasari mistakenly attributed the Rucellai Madonna to Duccio's contemporary, Cimabue, in his Lives of the Most Eminent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects. This mistake went unchallenged for centuries; in the 19th century Frederic Leighton depicted the Rucellai Madonna paraded through the streets in his first major painting, which bore the title Cimabue's Celebrated Madonna Carried in Procession (1853-5).[2][3] In 1889, however historian Franz Wickhoff compared stylistic choices between the Rucellai Madonna and Duccio's Maestà, and soon other critics agreed that Duccio had indeed painted the Rucellai Madonna.[4]
Description
The work, measuring 4.5 by 2.9 meters, was painted in egg tempera on a five-pieced poplar panel. The panel and frame would have been constructed by a master carpenter and then handed over to Duccio for painting. The frame is of the same wood. Although the contract required Duccio to use costly, ultramarine blue, made from ground lapis lazuli, conservators restoring the panel in 1989 determined the pigment of the Virgin's robe to be the cheaper substitute, azurite. Over the centuries, the blue pigments darkened considerably and the green bole underpainting of the fleshtones became more visible. A more recent restoration has rectified those issues, thereby greatly enhancing the tonal unity and subtle naturalism of the work.
The iconography of the painting was determined by the needs of the patrons and the Dominican order. The members of the Laudesi met in the chapel to sing lauds, or Latin hymns praising the Virgin;[5] an image of Mary provided a focus for those devotions. The roundels on the frame represent apostles, saints, and prominent members of the Dominican order, including Saints Dominic and Thomas Aquinas.[6]
Given the bitter political enmity of Florence and Siena, the Florentine civic group's choice of a Sienese artist is noteworthy. Siena regarded the Virgin not only as its patron saint, but as Queen of the city.[7] As a result of this association, Sienese artists like Guido da Siena and Duccio came to specialize in Marian imagery. Although compositional and iconographic sources of the Rucellai Madonna are Byzantine icons, Duccio's work was modeled on recent Sienese works, and not derived directly from a Greek model. The emphasis on grace and refinement seen in the Virgin's gown and stylized anatomy may reflect a familiarity with French Gothic art[8] (which is also suggested by the aspects of the later Maestà).
Legacy
The Rucellai Madonna is currently displayed in the first gallery of the Galleria degli Uffizi, along with Cimabue's Santa Trinità Maestà (c. 1285) and Giotto's Ognissanti Madonna (1306). This choice follows Vasari's example by locating the originary moment (“i primi lumi”) of Italian Renaissance painting in the works of those artists. This tendentious and teleological conception of late medieval works as early instantiations of the naturalistic, volumetric, and spatial concerns of the quattrocento is, however, misleading at best, as it divorces those images from their proper historical contexts and selectively emphasizes stylistic qualities that resemble later artistic currents of which 13th-century painters would obviously been unaware. Hence, Rucellai Madonna is often described as a naturalistic advance over primitive Italo-Byzantine stylization, a willful misreading of a gold-ground, highly stylized and ethereal image that has much more in common with Paleologan icons than with Masaccio.
References
- ^ Oxford Art Online
- ^ Hyman, Timothy (2003). Sienese Painting. New York: Thames & Hudson. pp. 23. ISBN 0-500-20372-5.
- ^ "Cimabue's Celebrated Madonna". National Gallery. Retrieved 24 March 2013.
- ^ Maginnis, Hayden (1997). Duccio's Rucellai Madonna. The Pennsylvania State University Press. pp. 64–78.
- ^ Wilson, Blake (1992). Music and Merchants: The Laudesi Companies of Republican Florence. Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. passim. ISBN 978-0198161769.
- ^ Hood, William (1993). Fra Angelico at San Marco. New Haven: Yale University Press. pp. 45–63. ISBN 978-0300057348.
- ^ Norman, Diana (1999). Siena and the Virgin. New Haven: Yale University Press. pp. passim. ISBN 978-0300080063.
- ^ Deuchler, Florens (1984). Duccio. Milano: Electa. pp. 3–28. ISBN 978-8843509720.
- ^ "Duccio's Rucellai Madonna". Smarthistory at Khan Academy. Retrieved January 31, 2013.
Sources
- Carli, Enzo (1952). Duccio. Milan.
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link) - Bellosi, Luciano (1994). "Duccio". Enciclopedia dell'Arte Medioevale. Rome.
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
This page was last edited on 15 May 2024, at 04:19