Duccio di Buoninsegna

?1255--?1318, Italian painter; founder of the Sienese school

Collins Discovery Encyclopedia, 1st edition © HarperCollins Publishers 2005

The following article is from The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1979). It might be outdated or ideologically biased.

Duccio Di Buoninsegna

Born circa 1255; died circa 1319. Italian painter. Founder of the 14th-century Sienese school of painting.

Duccio di Buoninsegna did not join the masters of the Roman and Florentine schools in their quest for the innovative. Although primarily influenced by Italo-Byzantine painting and French Gothic miniature painting, Duccio’s works do re-veal some characteristics of pre-Renaissance art. His altar-pieces, distinguished by gold ornamental backgrounds and vivid, refined color schemes, are lyrical and possess an emotionally expressive and refined linear rhythm (for example, the Madonna With Saints, National Pinocoteca, Siena, and the Rucellai Madonna, 1285, Ufizzi Gallery, Florence). In his main work, the Maestà altarpiece for the Cathedral of Siena (a double-sided polyptych, 1308-11, main part now in the Cathedral Museum, Siena), Duccio represented the Madonna enthroned with angels and saints on the obverse side and scenes of the passion of Christ on the reverse side. Without totally breaking away from medieval canons, Duccio sought to endow traditional compositional schemes with a more convincing lifelike quality and to convey a sense of volume and space. There are several reconstructions suggesting the original form of the polyptych.

REFERENCES

Alpatov, M. V. Ital’ianskoe iskusstvo epokhi Dante i Dzhotto. Moscow-Leningrad, 1939. Pages 110-17.
Lazarev, V. N. Proiskhozhdenie ital’ianskogo Vozrozhdeniia, vol. 2. Moscow, 1959. Pages 157-65.
Brandi, C. Duccio. Florence, 1951.
Carli, E. Duccio. Milan, 1962.

I. E. DANILOVA

Mentioned in

References in periodicals archive

Even for Christians, it is hard in the 21st century to imagine the jubilation with which Duccio di Buoninsegna's grand "Maesta" was carried from his workshop through the streets of Siena to the high altar of the city's cathedral on June 9, 1311.

A golden tenderness

Created--"painted" is for too prosaic a word--in the closing years of the thirteenth century, the diminutive panel has firmly maintained its place in the slim catalogue of Duccio di Buoninsegna's works since it first surfaced in a Roman collection at the turn of the last century.

The Metropolitan Duccio

Mulvaney, "Reading Gesture on Duccio di Buoninsegna's Maesta: Art, Drama, and Ritual in Late-Medieval Siena" (13-44); Barbara I.

Barbara I. Gusick and Edelgard E. DuBruck, eds. New Approaches to European Theater of the Middle Ages: An Ontology

A forma geometrica e saliente das muralhas de Lorenzetti e muito semelhante a forma das muralhas pintadas por Simone Martini (c.1284-11344) no mesmo Palacio comunal de Siena (Moretti, 1998: 70) e Duccio di Buoninsegna (c.1255-1319) (De Seta, 1991: 32).

Um espelho de principes artistico e profano: a representacao das virtudes do Bom Governo e os vicios do Mau Governo nos afrescos de Ambrogio Lorenzetti

After admiring the Maesta of Duccio di Buoninsegna, I descend the steep staircase to the baptistery, passing under the harmonious arch that would have been a side entrance to the grand cathedral, had it been completed.

A Trip of the Heart - The culture and art of tuscany's siena are better appreciated with the help of a well-versed local guide

I have read that Molloy's red stripes are of "the kind used in Maesta." Maesta, by Duccio di Buoninsegna, is the supreme masterpiece of Sienese painting.

Painting Earns Its Stripes

Duccio undertakes "to paint the said panel and to adorn it with the image of the Blessed Virgin Mary and her omnipotent Son and other figures, in accordance with the wishes and pleasure of the said commissioners" (my italics and James Stubblebine's translation in Duccio di Buoninsegna and His School [Princeton 1979], 1: 192-94).

Balancing acts: reading sources and weighing evidence in recent Italian renaissance art history