Stop and Look: Madonna and Child with Angels by Duccio di Buoninsegna

The slow emergence of the rich variety of Italian Renaissance painting from the fixed, solemn images of the Byzantine period is one of the most moving and thrilling spectacles offered by the history of European art, and this work is, at least symbolically, the icon that pinpoints the moment of that shift in direction.

I say “icon” because the picture is “iconic” in a quite literal sense. It was made by the artist to be displayed publically as a statement of the devoutly held faith of the city of Florence. We see from its size that it was no “cabinet picture” for use in a private home, much less in a small and intimate chapel. It hung high over the congregation in one of the largest churches in the city, Santa Maria Novella, and might, on festival days, be carried through the streets above a long procession of worshippers. Such processions can be seen today in the Catholic countries bordering the Mediterranean. It was a centuries-old tradition and one of the practical reasons why painting developed into such a sophisticated art in Italy. 

The stages of that development are vividly illustrated in the Rucellai Madonna. Duccio executed it, not in his native Siena, but in the larger city of Florence, seventy kilometres away across the rolling hills of Tuscany. There he may have worked in close collaboration with a slightly older Florentine painter, Cimabue (?c.1240 -1302), and art historians are uncertain which of the two influenced the other. It’s clear, though, that their lives embraced a period when Italian painting moved decisively from a style of hieratic stiffness and stillness to one of softer, more “human” warmth and vivacity.  

It may be my imagination, but that shift seems to be visible in this picture. The angels that support the throne of the Madonna, with its turned uprights and sumptuously embroidered hanging, all have the slightly oriental appearance that we associate with the ebbing style of the late Roman period: almond-shaped eyes, straight, beak-like noses and, if truth were told, suspicious expressions – as though they were a bit afraid of the wonder they are witnessing.  The Virgin herself possesses these features though she is quite unsuspicious: her gaze is fixed on something above her, ineffable and abstract, while they are concentrating on her, venerating her. The Christ Child himself, by contrast, has a recognisably “modern” face, his gaze clear, the outward expression of a determined personality.

Now this difference may be the result of some repainting after damage many years ago; but I think not. There is a seamless progression from the archaic uncertainties of the past to the clarity and certainty of the truth announced by Christ himself. The picture is an enactment of the pivotal place of revealed religion in the history of mankind, and by some sort of miraculous coincidence, of its own place in the history of art. 

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