National Gallery of Art

The episode illustrated in the panel is that recounted in the synoptic Gospels of the calling of the first two apostles: Jesus [fig. 1]   [fig. 1] Detail of Christ, Duccio di Buoninsegna, The Calling of the Apostles Peter and Andrew, 1308–1311, tempera on panel, National Gallery of Art, Washington, Samuel H. Kress Collection, walking by the Sea of Galilee, accosts Simon, called Peter, and Andrew, his brother, as they are casting a net into the sea, and invites them: “Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.”[1]  [1]
See Mt 4:18 – ​20; Mk 1:16 – ​18; Lk 5:1 – ​11. The composition conforms to the iconographicIconography, or Iconology
 Terms that refer broadly to the study of subjects and themes in works of art. Iconology, which is based on the results of iconography, is the more wide-ranging and comprehensive. One of the principal concerns of iconography is the discovery of symbolic and allegorical meanings in a work of art. —Willem F. Lash, Grove Art © Oxford University Press scheme already familiar in Sienese art in the thirteenth century,[2]  [2]
Guido da Siena had proposed a similar composition in his Pala di S. Pietro, no. 15 in the Pinacoteca Nazionale in Siena. though enriched by such details as the motif of the net full of fishes and Peter’s timid gesture of remonstrance, reported only by Luke (“Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man!”). The painting was the fourth of the nine scenes ([fig. 2]   [fig. 2] Duccio di Buoninsegna, Saint John the Baptist Bearing Witness, c. 1308–1311, tempera on panel transferred to canvas, Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest [fig. 3]   [fig. 3] Duccio di Buoninsegna, Temptation on the Temple, 1308–1311, tempera on panel, Museo dell'Opera del Duomo, Siena. Image: Soprintendenza per le Belle Arti e il Paesaggio di Siena, Grosseto ed Arezzo [fig. 4]   [fig. 4] Duccio di Buoninsegna, Temptation on the Mountain, 1308–1311, tempera on panel, Frick Collection, New York. Image © The Frick Collection, New York  [fig. 5]   [fig. 5] Duccio di Buoninsegna, The Wedding at Cana, 1308–1311, tempera on panel, Museo dell'Opera del Duomo, Siena. Image: Soprintendenza per le Belle Arti e il Paesaggio di Siena, Grosseto ed Arezzo [fig. 6]   [fig. 6] Duccio di Buoninsegna, Christ and the Samaritan Woman, 1310–1311, tempera on panel, Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, Madrid. Image © Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid [fig. 7]   [fig. 7] Duccio di Buoninsegna, Healing of the Man Born Blind, 1307/1308–1311, tempera on panel, The National Gallery, London. Image © National Gallery London/Art Resource, NY [fig. 8]   [fig. 8] Duccio di Buoninsegna, The Transfiguration, 1308–1311, tempera on panel, The National Gallery, London. Image © National Gallery London/Art Resource, NY [fig. 9]   [fig. 9] Duccio di Buoninsegna, The Raising of Lazarus, 1308–1311, tempera on panel, Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth. Image: Kimbell Art Museum, Forth Worth, Texas/Art Resource, NY) representing episodes of the public ministry of Jesus, arranged in the predellaPredella
 A horizontal band, cut from a single plank, below the main panels of an altarpiece. The appearance of the predella can be seen as part of the development of the altarpiece from a single panel to a large, multilevel polyptych. The small figures or scenes painted on the predella formed part of the integrated program of the altarpiece, providing a visual commentary on the major images above and at the same time physically raising the main panels, thus improving their visibility. —Ronald Baxter, Grove Art © Oxford University Press on the rear side of the altarpieceAltarpiece
 An image-bearing structure set on the rear part of the altar, abutting the back of the altarblock, or set behind the altar in such a way as to be visually joined with the altar when viewed from a distance. It is also sometimes called a retable, following the medieval term retrotabulum. The altarpiece was never officially prescribed by the Church, but it did perform a prescribed function alternatively carried out by a simple inscription on the altarblock: to declare to which saint or mystery the altar was dedicated. In fact, the altarpiece did more than merely identify the altar; its form and content evoked the mystery or personage whose cult was celebrated at the altar. This original and lasting function influenced the many forms taken by the altarpiece throughout its history. —Alexander Nagel, Grove Art © Oxford University Press, the side turned towards the apse [fig. 10]   [fig. 10] Reconstruction of the back of the predella of Duccio di Buoninsegna's Maestà: a. Saint John the Baptist Bearing Witness (fig. 2); b. Temptation on the Temple (fig. 3); c. Temptation on the Mountain (fig. 4); d. The Calling of the Apostles Peter and Andrew; e. The Wedding at Cana (fig. 5); f. Christ and the Samaritan Woman (fig. 6); g. Healing of the Man Born Blind (fig. 7); h. The Transfiguration (fig. 8); i. The Raising of Lazarus (fig. 9) (see also Reconstruction). It was a kind of introduction to the narrative of the Passion, recounted in the twenty-six scenes of the main register of the back of the Maestà and the seven postmortem scenes placed in the gables [fig. 11]   [fig. 11] Reconstruction of the back of the Maestà altarpiece for Siena Cathedral by Duccio di Buoninsegna (see also Reconstruction). The front side [fig. 12]   [fig. 12] Reconstruction of the front of the Maestà altarpiece for Siena Cathedral by Duccio di Buoninsegna (see also Reconstruction), facing the nave, was dedicated to the glorification of the Virgin Mary, to whom the cathedral was consecrated. In the main register she appears enthroned, surrounded by twenty angels and ten saints. In the upper register was a gallery of ten busts of apostles, while the predella illustrated seven stories of the childhood of Christ interspersed with six figures of prophets (see entry for The Nativity with the Prophets Isaiah and Ezekiel). The stories of the death and glorification of the Virgin appeared in the seven panels of the gable. Above these latter, at the very top of the altarpiece, on both sides of the work, small panels with busts of angels flanked further lost images.

The altarpiece of monumental dimensions and complex structure, of which The Nativity and The Calling of the Apostles formed part, is unusually well documented.[3]  [3]
For the relevant documentation, cf. Jane Immler Satkowski, Duccio di Buoninsegna: The Documents and Early Sources, ed. Hayden B. J. Maginnis (Athens, GA, 2000), 69 – ​81; Alessandro Bagnoli et al., eds., Duccio: Siena fra tradizione bizantina e mondo gotico (Cinisello Balsamo, Milan, 2003), 577 – ​579. The procedures regulating the execution of the work and the payments to be made to the artist were meticulously described in a document dated October 9, 1308. It obliged Duccio to conduct the enterprise continuously, without any interruption, and without taking on any other work. It also stipulated that the hours of any absences from his workshop should be deducted from his daily remuneration. The wording of the document, and the fact that it fails to specify the subject or structure of the altarpiece, suggests that it was not in fact the original contract but a supplement to it, presumably prompted by the excessive slowness in the progress of the execution. By October 1308, therefore, Duccio probably had been at work on the Maestà for some time. On the other hand, we do have a secure terminus ante quem for the completion of the altarpiece: on June 9, 1311, some musicians were paid for having accompanied it as it was being transported, in triumphal procession, from the artist’s workshop to the cathedral.[4]  [4]
Various scholars rightly have accepted John Pope-­Hennessy’s suggestion that the document of 1308 could not have been the original contract. Luciano Bellosi, however, thought that the work was executed between October 1308 and June 1311. See John Pope-­Hennessy, “Some Italian Primitives,” Apollo 118 (1983): 10 – ​11; Luciano Bellosi, “Il percorso di Duccio,” in Duccio: Siena fra tradizione bizantina e mondo gotico, ed. Alessandro Bagnoli et al. (Cinisello Balsamo, Milan, 2003), 124. Subsequent events in the history of the work also can be followed almost step by step, thanks to the rich surviving documentation.

Art historical discussion of the Maestà has concentrated mainly on the problem of reconstructing the original appearance of the dismantled and in part dispersed ensemble. An exception is James Stubblebine’s attempts to distinguish the parts attributable to various assistants who hypothetically participated in its execution.[5]  [5]
James H. Stubblebine, “Duccio and His Collaborators on the Cathedral Maestà,” The Art Bulletin 55 (1973): 185 – ​204; James H. Stubblebine, “The Back Predella of Duccio’s Maestà,” in Studies in Late Medieval and Renaissance Painting in Honor of Millard Meiss, ed. Irving Lavin and John Plummer, 2 vols. (New York, 1977), 1:430 – ​436; James H. Stubblebine, Duccio di Buoninsegna and His School, 2 vols. (Princeton, 1979), 1:32, 39 – ​48. The only fully autograph parts, in his view, were the large image of the Maestà itself on the front side and the predella below, while the rest of the altarpiece was attributable to various of the main Sienese painters of the early Trecento. In particular, the rear predella, of which this panel formed part, was, according to Stubblebine, painted by Pietro Lorenzetti (Sienese, active 1306 - 1345). More recent studies have not accepted this attribution, at variance with the stylistic data, and the wording of the contract of 1308 also apparently contradicts it: a daily remuneration for Duccio was stipulated as “sixteen soldi of Sienese money for each day that the said Duccio shall work with his own hands on the said panel.”[6]  [6]
“Duccius promisit​ . . . ​laborare continue in dicta tabula temporibus quibus laborari poterit in eadem, et non accipere vel recepire aliquod aliud laborerium ad faciendum donec dicta tabula conpleta et facta fuerit. . . . dominus Jacoppus operarius​ . . . ​promisit dicto Duccio pro suo salario​ . . . ​sedicim solidos denariorum Senensium pro quolibet die quo dictus Duccius laborabit suis manibus in dicta tabula” (Duccio promised​ . . . ​to work continuously upon the said panel at such times as he was able to work on it, and not to accept or receive any other work to be carried out until the said panel shall have been made and completed. . . . Lord Jacopo, clerk of works​ . . . ​promised the said Duccio as his salary​ . . . ​sixteen soldi of Sienese money for each day that the said Duccio shall work with his own hands on the said panel). Jane Immler Satkowski, Duccio di Buoninsegna: The Documents and Early Sources, ed. Hayden B. J. Maginnis (Athens, GA, 2000), 69; Alessandro Bagnoli et al., eds., Duccio: Siena fra tradizione bizantina e mondo gotico (Cinisello Balsamo, Milan, 2003), 577. In any case, the extraordinary stylistic coherence of the altarpiece seems to exclude the participation of artists who had already completed their apprenticeship and were able to express themselves with a style of their own —  in other words, artists other than those of Duccio’s shop. Duccio, of course, would not have tackled single-handedly the daunting task of painting the eighty or so images of various size that make up the Maestà: he would have undoubtedly entrusted to others the largely mechanical realization of the more decorative parts. His assistants, following the outlines of his drawing, would have intervened in the painting of the less demanding areas of the settings, architectural backdrops, and draperies. But it is equally certain that the master rigorously controlled the work of his assistants, reserving for himself the task not only of painting the faces, or the bodies in movement, but also of revising and finishing the passages he had not personally painted himself.[7]  [7]
For the organization of the work and the involvement of studio assistants in the execution of the Maestà, cf. John White, Duccio: Tuscan Art and the Medieval Workshop (New York, 1979), 102 – ​119; Luciano Bellosi, Duccio, la Maestà (Milan, 1998), 20. Bruno Zanardi’s observations on the system of collaboration between the painters in the fresco decoration of the basilica of San Francesco in Assisi should, however, be taken into consideration in this regard. Cf. Bruno Zanardi, Giotto e Pietro Cavallini: La questione di Assisi e il cantiere medievale di pittura a fresco, Biblioteca d’arte Skira (Milan, 2002), 39 – ​83. Although in my view not always convincing, the observations of this intelligent and well-prepared restorer remain valuable, because they are the outcome of long experience with restoring medieval cycles of frescoes. The organization of teamwork between master and pupils in a cycle of mural paintings cannot have been very different from that ascertained, or assumed, in a large altarpiece like the Maestà.

Discussion has also focused on how best to interpret the iconography of the scenes on the back of the Maestà,[8]  [8]
Cf. John White, Duccio: Tuscan Art and the Medieval Workshop (New York, 1979), 124 – ​130; Florens Deuchler, Duccio (Milan, 1984), 58 – ​63; Luciano Bellosi, Duccio, la Maestà (Milan, 1998), 14 – ​15. which remains in some respects problematic. But art historical analysis has been especially prolific, as noted above, in trying to reconstruct its original appearance. This task, made difficult by the dismemberment of the altarpiece at an early date and the loss of some of its components, was systematically tackled for the first time by Eduard Dobbert (1885), a scholar whose knowledge of the front predella was limited to six scenes and six figures of prophets.[9]  [9]
Eduard Dobbert, “Duccio’s Bild Die Geburt Christi in der Königlichen Gemälde-Galerie zu Berlin,” Jahrbuch der Preußischen Kunstsammlungen 6 (1885): 153–163. He rightly intuited that the sequence of the stories of the childhood of Christ must have begun with The Annunciation [fig. 2]   [fig. 2] Duccio di Buoninsegna, Saint John the Baptist Bearing Witness, c. 1308–1311, tempera on panel transferred to canvas, Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest, that the scenes must have been interspersed with figures of prophets, and that the predella as a whole must have been as broad as the main panel of the Maestà above. Of the back predella, Dobbert seemed familiar only with The Wedding at Cana [fig. 5]   [fig. 5] Duccio di Buoninsegna, The Wedding at Cana, 1308–1311, tempera on panel, Museo dell'Opera del Duomo, Siena. Image: Soprintendenza per le Belle Arti e il Paesaggio di Siena, Grosseto ed Arezzo, which had remained in the Opera del Duomo in Siena, but he succeeded in correctly guessing the subjects of five other scenes.[10]  [10]
Though Dobbert did not say so, he probably knew, either directly or at least indirectly, the five components of the back predella that passed into the hands of Fairfax Murray: The Calling of the Apostles Peter and Andrew, Christ with the Woman of Samaria, and Raising of Lazarus, all three subsequently sold to the Benson collection in London; Healing of the Man Born Blind, sold together with the Annunciation from the front predella to the National Gallery in London in 1883; and the Transfiguration, purchased in Siena (presumably again from Fairfax Murray) by R. H. Wilson and donated to the National Gallery in London in 1891. The omission of the Temptation on the Mountain, undoubtedly in the hands of the same painter and art dealer in the early years of the nineteenth century, is difficult to explain. It was perhaps ignored merely because, according to Dobbert, no more than seven stories could have been placed on this side of the predella. Dobbert assumed that the number of episodes in the predella must have been identical on both sides of the altarpiece; so it followed that the scenes relating to the public life of Jesus, the first of which must have been a lost Baptism of Christ, would have been similarly interspersed with figures of prophets. Curt Weigelt (1909) accepted Dobbert’s reconstruction of the front predella but proposed the presence of ten stories in the rear predella (adding to the subjects already taken into consideration the Temptation in the Wilderness, Temptation on the Mount [fig. 4]   [fig. 4] Duccio di Buoninsegna, Temptation on the Mountain, 1308–1311, tempera on panel, Frick Collection, New York. Image © The Frick Collection, New York, and the Temptation on the Temple [fig. 3]   [fig. 3] Duccio di Buoninsegna, Temptation on the Temple, 1308–1311, tempera on panel, Museo dell'Opera del Duomo, Siena. Image: Soprintendenza per le Belle Arti e il Paesaggio di Siena, Grosseto ed Arezzo, the latter a panel he himself had rediscovered).[11]  [11]
Curt H. Weigelt, “Contributo alla ricostruzione della Maestà di Duccio di Buoninsegna, che si trova nel Museo della Metropolitana di Siena,” Bullettino senese di storia patria 16 (1909): 191 – ​214. Weigelt was in error in assuming that the gable zones were filled by eight panels of identical size on both sides.[12]  [12]
A hypothetical reconstruction of the Maestà that proposed a complete series of representations of the three Temptations would involve an intractable problem of how to coordinate panels of unequal number in the various registers of the complex: ten stories in the predella, eight in the upper register, and seven episodes of the narrative of the Passion in the main panel. The thesis of ten stories in the back predella was revived in more recent times in the reconstruction proposed by Ernest T. DeWald, “Observations on Duccio’s Maestà,” in Late Classical and Mediaeval Studies in Honor of Albert Mathias Friend Jr, ed. Kurt Weitzmann (Princeton, 1955), 367; Cesare Brandi, ed., Il restauro della Maestà di Duccio (Rome, 1959), 9. This error was corrected in the reconstruction proposed by Vittorio Lusini (1912), who intuited the presence of a panel of larger size at the center of the upper tier: an image of identical width to that of the Crucifixion below. The two central panels, he conjectured, would have been composed of the now lost scenes of the Coronation of the Virgin (on the front side) and the Ascension (on the back), each of which would have been flanked by three gable panels on either side: the last episodes of the life of Mary above the Maestà and the postmortem stories of Christ on the back. This suggestion has in general been endorsed by more recent studies, whereas the reconstruction proposed by Lusini of a predella with as many as fifteen compartments (nine stories and six prophets) below the Maestà and eleven in the predella on the opposite side has not been accepted.[13]  [13]
In his efforts to complete the iconographic program in what seemed to him the most plausible way, though without taking sufficient account of the evidence of the surviving parts, Vittorio Lusini argued that the representations extended on both sides beyond the width of the main panel, also occupying the lateral pillars of the frame. Vittorio Lusini, “Di Duccio di Buoninsegna,” Rassegna d’arte senese 8 (1912): 70 – ​75.

In more recent decades, general consensus has been reached regarding the nine episodes of the rear predella. Weigelt’s reconstruction of the front predella has also been accepted. It is also generally conceded that one of the stories of the public life of Jesus and the two scenes filling the front and rear of the central gable have been lost.[14]  [14]
Frederick A. Cooper, “A Reconstruction of Duccio’s Maestà,” The Art Bulletin 47 (1965): 163 – ​164, proposed, implausibly, a predella with only six stories of the childhood of Christ, transferring the scene of Christ among the Doctors to the predella on the back. James H. Stubblebine rightly pointed out that the front and back predella must have had the same width and therefore that the back predella could not have accommodated more than nine scenes. James H. Stubblebine, “The Angel Pinnacles on Duccio’s Maestà,” Art Quarterly 32 (1969): 131 – ​152; James H. Stubblebine, “The Back Predella of Duccio’s Maestà,” in Studies in Late Medieval and Renaissance Painting in Honor of Millard Meiss, ed. Irving Lavin and John Plummer, 2 vols. (New York, 1977), 1:430 – ​436; James H. Stubblebine, Duccio di Buoninsegna and His School, 2 vols. (Princeton, 1979), 1:54. In his attempt iconographically to complete the subjects of the panels, he conjectured that a further two stories, a representation of Christ with the Baptist (the Baptism of Christ or the Baptist Bearing Witness) and a scene of a miracle (the Raising of Lazarus), were placed at the two narrow sides of the frame of the altarpiece, respectively flanking the episodes of Christ among the Doctors and the Transfiguration. Ruth Wilkins Sullivan made a similar proposal, though it has to be said that predellas of this type (with narrow side panels) otherwise appear in Sienese painting no earlier than the end of the fourteenth century. Ruth Wilkins Sullivan, “The Anointing in Bethany and Other Affirmations of Christ’s Divinity on Duccio’s Back Predella,” The Art Bulletin 67 (1985): 32 – ​50. A second order of gable panels with busts of angels, some of them still extant, is also a generally accepted hypothesis.[15]  [15]
The payment memorandum, undated but datable to c. 1309, referred to certain “angiolette di sopra” (little angels above) in the Maestà, which ever since Dobbert’s reconstruction (1885) were understood as panels of the highest tier. Cf. Jane Immler Satkowski, Duccio di Buoninsegna: The Documents and Early Sources, ed. Hayden B. J. Maginnis (Athens, GA, 2000), 75 – ​76; Alessandro Bagnoli et al., eds., Duccio: Siena fra tradizione bizantina e mondo gotico (Cinisello Balsamo, Milan, 2003), 578. Different proposals, however, have been formulated about the form and number of the components of this third register. Dobbert assumed twelve such busts of angels, placed to the sides of the stories of Christ, while Curt Weigelt (1909) concluded that there were eight on either side of the panel. After some tentative attempts at identification, it was James H. Stubblebine (1969) who identified the four busts of angels that the more recent literature recognizes as belonging to the Maestà: those in the Mount Holyoke College Art Museum in South Hadley, Massachusetts; in the Philadelphia Museum of Art (J. G. Johnson Collection); in the Stichting Huis Bergh in ’s-­Heerenbergh, Holland; and the panel formerly in the Stoclet collection in Brussels. According to Stubblebine there must originally have been six busts of angels, both on the front and back sides, placed to the sides of the central image. Stubblebine’s proposal regarding the round-arched termination of these panels seems unjustified, since none of the four surviving busts of angels retains its original profile. See Eduard Dobbert, “Duccio’s Bild Die Geburt Christi in der König­lichen Gemälde-­Galerie zu Berlin,” Jahrbuch der Preußischen Kunstsammlungen 6 (1885): 153 – ​163; Curt H. Weigelt, “Contributo alla ricostruzione della Maestà di Duccio di Buoninsegna, che si trova nel Museo della Metropolitana di Siena,” Bullettino senese di storia patria 16 (1909): 191 – ​214; James H. Stubblebine, “The Angel Pinnacles on Duccio’s Maestà,” Art Quarterly 32 (1969): 131 – ​152. On this question see also Giovanna Ragionieri, in Duccio: Siena fra tradizione bizantina e mondo gotico, ed. Alessandro Bagnoli et al. (Cinisello Balsamo, Milan, 2003), 25; Carl Brandon Strehlke, Italian Paintings, 1250 – ​1450, in the John G. Johnson Collection and the Philadelphia Museum of Art (Philadelphia, 2004), 124 – ​133. The important research by John White (1973, 1979) has permitted the original dimensions of the Maestà to be established in a plausible way. It measured, according to White, 439 cm in width, while the predella would have been about 450 cm long. The altarpiece would have been supported by two robust lateral pillars or buttresses, with a width of some 30 cm.[16]  [16]
John White, “Measurement, Design and Carpentry in Duccio’s Maestà, 1,” The Art Bulletin 55 (1973): 334 – ​364; John White, “Measurement, Design and Carpentry in Duccio’s Maestà, 2,” The Art Bulletin 55 (1973): 547 – ​569; John White, Duccio: Tuscan Art and the Medieval Workshop (New York, 1979), 94, 207 – ​208. White calculated the dimensions of the individual components of Duccio’s altarpiece starting from the assumption that the artist “almost certainly used a Roriczer Progression based on the width of the main panel together with a second progression based on the diagonal of the main panel, to control the entire proportional design of his altarpiece”(White 1979, 94). On the buttresses that served to support the elaborate and heavy structure of the Maestà, cf. Christa Gardner von Teuffel, “The Buttressed Altarpiece: A Forgotten Aspect of Tuscan Fourteenth-­Century Altarpiece Design,” Jahrbuch der Berliner Museen 21 (1979): 21 – ​65. The overall height of the Maestà remains difficult to calculate, since the gabled elements at the center of the altarpiece are now missing. Sporadic attempts to identify the lost panels with surviving paintings have not met with acceptance in the literature. Alessandro Conti thought that Coronation of the Virgin in Budapest (Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest, no. 16) was a surviving fragment of the central panel of the upper tier on the front side.[17]  [17]
Alessandro Conti, “Review of Duccio, Tuscan Art and the Medieval Workshop by John White,” Prospettiva 23 (1980): 100. The proposal is interesting, since the painting in question undoubtedly has Duccesque characteristics and its proportions (contrary to what has been claimed) do not seem at variance with those of the Maestà. Moreover, a witness as trustworthy as Lorenzo Ghiberti maintained that the Coronation did appear on the front side of the altarpiece. So, while we may admit that the pictorial treatment of the panel in Budapest reveals a hand inferior to that of Duccio himself, we ought not to dismiss too hastily the hypothesis that it originally formed part of the Maestà.[18]  [18]
Vittorio Lusini (1912) maintained that the subject represented in the central panel of the gable zone would have been a theme of particular importance and would have been linked iconographically with the central part of the main part of the altarpiece: he conjectured the Coronation of the Virgin (surmounted by the image of the Blessing Christ) over the Maestà and the Ascension (surmounted by the image of the Blessing God the Father) on the other side. Vittorio Lusini, “Di Duccio di Buoninsegna,” Rassegna d’arte senese 8 (1912): 74. This proposal still retains its validity today, though a more accredited variant is that which links the episode of the Assumption with the Coronation and the Resurrection with the Ascension; both subjects are missing from the surviving panels of the Maestà. It is very significant, moreover, that Ghiberti, speaking of Duccio and the “tavola maggiore del duomo di Siena” (high altarpiece of Siena Cathedral), said that “nella parte dinançi” (on its front side), one could see “la incoronatione di Nostra Donna” (the coronation of Our Lady); cf. Julius von Schlosser, ed., Lorenzo Ghibertis Denkwürdigkeiten, 2 vols. (Berlin, 1912), 1:43. Alessandro Conti’s hypothesis, which Giovanni Ragionieri accepted (1989), was, however, rejected by more recent studies (Schmidt 1999, 2001, 2003) and evidently was not shared by Luciano Bellosi (1998), who failed to refer to it in his study on the Maestà. See Gio­vanna Ragionieri, Duccio: Catalogo completo dei dipinti (Florence, 1989), 134 – ​135; Victor M. Schmidt, “A Duccesque Fragment of the Coronation of the Virgin,” Bulletin du Musée Hongrois des Beaux-­Arts 90 – ​91 (1999): 39 – ​52, 167 – ​174; Victor M. Schmidt, “Duccio di Buoninsegna,” in Allgemeines Künstlerlexikon: Die bildenden Künstler aller Zeiten und Völker, ed. Günter Meißner, 87 vols. (Mu­­nich, 2001), 30:153 – ​157; Victor M. Schmidt, “Tipologie e funzioni della pittura senese su tavola,” in Duccio: Siena fra tradizione bizantina e mondo gotico, ed. Alessandro Bagnoli et al. (Cinisello Balsamo, Milan, 2003), 557, 560; Luciano Bellosi, Duccio, la Maestà (Milan, 1998). However, as Victor M. Schmidt pointed out, the “pattern of the cloth of honor behind the Virgin in the Budapest panel is a virtual repetition of that of St. Catherine’s mantle,” and “the pattern of the Virgin’s mantle in the fragment repeats that of St. Agnes”: two of the female saints that appear alongside the Madonna in the Maestà (Schmidt 1999, 40 – ​42). It should also be recalled that the motifs incised in the halos of the panel in Budapest closely resemble those in Duccio’s altarpiece. According to Schmidt, the dimensions of the fragment (51.5 × 32 cm) would exclude its belonging to the Maestà, since if the parts now truncated were to be reintegrated the panel would be too big to fit into the central gable. However, the reconstruction proposed by Schmidt did not take into account uncertainties in the calculation of the original size of the Budapest fragment: the difference between its effective width and the lost width of the central gable as John White reconstructed it (77.8 cm) would, in my view, leave sufficient space to accommodate the now lost figure of Christ and the essential structures of the throne. What seems hardly compatible with Duccio’s work is not the size but the style of the Budapest fragment, with its overly dense chiaroscuro and rather schematic modeling. On the other hand, the date of execution of the painting in the Hungarian museum (also in light of the analogies of the ornamental motifs that Schmidt observed) ought to fall more or less in the same years as the Maestà. Bearing this in mind, as well as the relative rarity of the subject as a self-standing image, I cannot categorically exclude the intervention of a studio assistant in this upper zone of the complex.

Another hypothesis, formulated more recently by the present writer (1982, 1990), concerns the missing first scene of the back of the predella.[19]  [19]
Miklós Boskovits, “Review of Duccio di Buoninsegna and His School by J. H. Stubblebine; and Duccio di Buoninsegna by J. White,” The Art Bulletin 64 (1982): 497 – ​502; Miklós Boskovits and Serena Padovani, The Thyssen-­Bornemisza Collection: Early Italian Painting 1290 – ​1470 (London, 1990), 76. It seems to me that it can be identified with the little painting also in the museum in Budapest, Saint John the Baptist Bearing Witness [fig. 2]   [fig. 2] Duccio di Buoninsegna, Saint John the Baptist Bearing Witness, c. 1308–1311, tempera on panel transferred to canvas, Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest. In general, previous proposals for the reconstruction of the Maestà assumed for this part of the predella an image (perhaps the one that was still visible in the sacristy of the cathedral in 1798 and then disappeared) representing the Baptism of Christ or the Temptation in the Wilderness, though the theme of the Baptist Bearing Witness was also considered a possible subject.[20]  [20]
Though admitting the possibility that the first scene of the back predella might have been the Baptism of Christ, James H. Stubblebine wrote that “there is evidence pointing to the likelihood that the scene​ . . . ​represented the first time that the Baptist bore witness, as it is described in the Gospel​ (John 1: 26 – ​27).” James H. Stubblebine, Duccio di Buoninsegna and His School, 2 vols. (Princeton, 1979), 53 – ​54. According to Stubblebine, the painting representing this subject in the Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest (no. 6) could be a copy of the lost scene of the Maestà. The Budapest panel, which is in poor condition and perhaps for this very reason sold by the Opera del Duomo, represents a rare subject; very likely it formed part of a larger complex of which, however, no other component has yet been identified. Usually it has been connected with the activity of Ugolino da Siena. Might it instead have formed part of the altarpiece over the high altar in the cathedral? In its present condition it is very difficult to judge, but both the circumstance that Giovanni Battista Cavalcaselle (who had perhaps been able to see it, in the mid-nineteenth century, in better condition than it is now) did not hesitate to attribute it to Duccio [21]  [21]
Joseph Archer Crowe and Giovan Battista Cavalcaselle, A New History of Painting in Italy from the Second to the Sixteenth Century, 3 vols. (London, 1864), 2:52. The attribution to Duccio was later confirmed by such connoisseurs as Robert Langton Douglas, in Joseph Archer Crowe and Giovan Battista Cavalcaselle, A History of Painting in Italy from the Second to the Sixteenth Century, vol. 3, The Sienese, Umbrian, and North Italian Schools, ed. Robert Langton Douglas (London, 1908), 19 n. 2; and Bernard Berenson, Italian Pictures of the Renaissance: A List of the Principal Artists and Their Works with an Index of Places (Oxford, 1932), 176. and the slenderness of the arguments with which art historians have tried to deny that it formed part of the predella of the Maestà concur to make its belonging to this work an option that still, in my view, remains valid.[22]  [22]
Victor M. Schmidt observed that in the painting now in Budapest “some significant details are at odds with the scenes​ . . . ​that surely belong to the Maestà. First, the red color of the Christ’s garment is too dark. . . . Second, Christ’s blue mantle is striated with golden striations. . . . Third, Christ’s halo​ . . . ​has painted contours.” Victor M. Schmidt, “A Duccesque Painting Representing St John the Baptist Bearing Witness in the Museum of Fine Arts,” Bulletin du Musée Hongrois des Beaux-­Arts 96 (2002): 53 – ​54. But in the painting’s current state, with its surface covered by a layer of grime and darkened varnish, and with the gold ground completely regilded, the first and last of these observations cannot be seriously taken into consideration. As for the second, since the mantle of Jesus also has golden striations in the last episode of the predella, the Transfiguration, it cannot be excluded that the same was also the case in the initial scene, another epiphany, in which John recognizes the Messiah in Jesus: “This is he of whom I said, ‘After me comes a man who ranks before me, for he was before me’” (Jn 1:30). According to Anna Eörsi, the panel, which she confirmed to be probably the missing element on the back predella, illustrates the words of the Gospel of John (1:26): “there is one among you whom you do not recognize.” Anna Eörsi, “‘. . . There is one among you whom you do not recognise’: Some Golden Threads to Miklós Boskovits with Reference to Duccio’s Saint John the Baptist,” Bulletin du Musée Hongrois des Beaux-­Arts 104 (2006): 63 – ​73. The dimensions of the Budapest painting in its present condition (28.5 × 38 cm) are considerably smaller than those of the predella (c. 48 × 50 cm is the average size of those predella panels that have not been cropped), but it seems that it has been cut on all sides, with the possible exception of the lower side. The proportions of the figures correspond, however, to those of the protagonists in the stories of Duccio’s predella. Evidently in view of its poor condition, the painting was transferred to a new support. This operation, conducted at some point in the first half of the nineteenth century, was botched, making drastic restoration of the painting’s whole surface necessary. Johann Anton Ramboux, who had purchased the painting in Siena, said it was comparable with those preserved in the sacristy of Siena Cathedral, i.e., the surviving gable and predella panels of the Maestà. See J. M. Heberle, Catalog der nachgelassenen Kunst-­Sammlungen des Herrn Johann Anton Ramboux (Cologne, May 23, 1867) no. 70. This raises the strong suspicion that it was just this episode that was still present in the sacristy of the cathedral in 1798 but was then discarded.

The original appearance of the Maestà, and in particular of the back predella, thus still remains a discussed problem. What remains unchallenged, on the other hand, is the artistic quality of the two panels now in the National Gallery of Art, and on this point a further brief comment should be made. The particular accomplishment of execution of the paintings in the lower zones of the Maestà has long been recognized. Some have tried to explain this phenomenon by assuming that the painter left less room there for the intervention of studio assistants than in the less visible parts, in the upper tiers of the altarpiece.[23]  [23]
Weigelt, who suspected the intervention of assistants in the Marian scenes of the upper register, considered the postmortem stories of Christ “ganz Schülerarbeit.” Curt H. Weigelt, Duccio di Buoninsegna: Studien zur Geschichte der frühsienesischen Tafelmalerei (Leipzig, 1911), 16. Vittorio Lusini also proposed the intervention of assistants in the gable panels, while in more recent times Enzo Carli spoke of the involvement of collaborators in the execution of the gable zone and perhaps also in the series of busts of apostles. See Vittorio Lusini, Il Duomo di Siena (Siena, 1911), 68; Enzo Carli, La pittura senese (Milan, 1955), 48; Enzo Carli, La pittura senese del Trecento (Milan, 1981), 66. Others emphasize, more plausibly, the more retardataire style detectable in the panels that would have adorned the gables of the work. They point out that the work would have proceeded from top to bottom, and suggest that during the long gestation of the enterprise Duccio was able to experiment with new solutions and to modify his initial project.[24]  [24]
Apart from a first mention by Hayden B. J. Maginnis, it was John White who formulated a hypothesis on how such a large and complex work as the Maestà might have been painted. Hayden B. J. Maginnis, “The Literature of Sienese Trecento Painting 1945 – ​1975,” Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte 40 (1977): 279 – ​280; John White, Duccio: Tuscan Art and the Medieval Workshop (New York, 1979), 93, 106 – ​107. In his view, the execution must have begun only after the completion of its wooden frame. He also assumed that the painting of the huge surface must have proceeded with the use of scaffolds, as in the case of a fresco. According to White, the undated memorandum of c. 1309 that established the procedures for the payment of the rear side of the altarpiece did not mention the predella, because at the time it was not yet in the course of execution. Therefore, it would have been the last part of the complex to be executed. Julian Gardner noted that the idea of alternating narrative scenes and standing figures derives from Nicola Pisano’s pulpit in the cathedral of Siena. Julian Gardner, “Some Aspects of the History of the Italian Altar, ca. 1250 – ​ca. 1350: Placement and Decoration,” in Objects, Images and the Word: Art in the Service of the Liturgy, ed. Colum Hourihane (Princeton, 2003), 151. The painstaking execution, accomplished technique, concise narrative, and expressive emotion in the figures that populate the stories of the predella, where the perspective incongruities present in the gable panels and in the stories of the Passion no longer appear, would therefore depend on their later dating, though this cannot be any later than June 30, 1311.[25]  [25]
Basing himself on the more advanced style of the scenes of the predella, Alessandro Conti suggested that it was added to the Maestà later than 1311. Alessandro Conti, “Review of Duccio, Tuscan Art and the Medieval Workshop by John White,” Prospettiva 23 (1980): 101. Except for Giulietta Chelazzi Dini et al., however, no recent scholars seem to have shared this hypothesis. Giulietta Chelazzi Dini, Alessandro Angelini, and Bernardina Sani, Pittura senese (Milan, 1997), 36. If we compare a passage such as the Calling of the Apostles Peter and Andrew with the similar scene of the Apparition of Jesus on the Sea of Tiberius (Museo dell’Opera del Duomo, Siena), we will immediately feel the greater spaciousness of the composition of the painting now in the Gallery. The figures are smaller and fewer but characterized by particular fluency and eloquence in gesture [fig. 13]   [fig. 13] Detail of apostles Peter and Andrew, Duccio di Buoninsegna, The Calling of the Apostles Peter and Andrew, 1308–1311, tempera on panel, National Gallery of Art, Washington, Samuel H. Kress Collection. Similar aspects can also be detected in the predella panel of the Nativity [fig. 14]   [fig. 14] Detail of First Bath of the child, Duccio di Buoninsegna, The Nativity with the Prophets Isaiah and Ezekiel, 1308–1311, tempera on panel, National Gallery of Art, Washington, Andrew W. Mellon Collection, especially if the painting is compared, for example, with one of the last episodes of the life of Mary, recounted in the gable panels. In the Nativity, by contrast, a large number of figures are included, and yet the scene does not seem unduly crowded. In spite of some archaic features, such as the adoption of a larger scale for the figure of Mary than for the other figures, or the incongruity of the roof of the stable, seen from below on the right side and from above on the left, Duccio’s “digressive approach to narration” [26]  [26]
Keith Christiansen, Duccio and the Origins of Western Painting (New York; New Haven, 2008), 29. succeeds in both creating convincing spatial effects and combining the various episodes into a coherent composition. This is also thanks to the master’s subtle analysis of the conduct of the protagonists, who, with their intense emotional participation, render the narrative vivid, complex, and humanly credible.

Miklós Boskovits (1935–2011)

March 21, 2016