The great age of the Sienese School
started with Duccio. Neither contemporary accounts of him nor any personally
written documents have come down to us. Though there are many records for
Duccio in municipal archives: records of changing of address, payments,
civil penalties and contracts, which help to get an idea of the life of
the painter.
Although as a young man Duccio
probably worked in Assisi, he spent virtually his entire life in Siena.
Duccio is first mentioned in Sienese documents in 1278 in connection with
commissions for 12 wooden panels for the covers of the municipal books.
In 1285, a lay brotherhood in Florence commissioned him to complete an
altarpiece for the church of Santa Maria Novella. This masterpiece is known
now as the Rusellai Madonna. By
that date he must already have had a name, which guaranteed a high quality
of work.
At the beginning of the 14th century
Siena was competing with its neighbor, Florence, for political and artistic
supremacy in central Italy. Duccio seems to have played an important role
in this period of economic and artistic expansion in Siena. In 1295, along
with other masters from the cathedral stonemasons’ lodge, he was appointed
to a special committee that was to decide where a new fountain should be
installed. Seven years later, in 1302, he received payments for an altarpiece
with a predella – now lost – which he was due to paint for a chapel in
the Palazzo Publico, the seat of the municipal government.
Finally, his most significant
commission for the city was the new monumental picture of the Madonna for
the cathedral’s high altar, the Maestà.
The surviving contract from 1308, as well as various payment records for
1311, documents the creation and installation of this work.
The last entry on Duccio in the
municipal archives is dated October 1319. In it his seven children declare
that they are foregoing their inheritance in favor of their mother. This
means that their father must have died in 1318 or 1319.
Today nine or ten works definitely by Duccio’s hand are known. They
are: the Crevoli Madonna (1280),
the Madonna of the Franciscans
(1300), Madonna in the Galleria Nazionale of Perugia, the
Maestà
(1308-1311), the
Rucellai Madonna
(1285), a Madonna in a private collection in Brussels, two
altarpieces in the Pinacoteca Nazionale of Siena, The
Holy Virgin with the Christ Child and Four Saints (1300); and
two triptychs, one in the National Gallery in London, The
Holy Virgin and the Christ Child with St. Dominic and St. Aurea
(1300), and one in the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.
A faithful follower of Byzantine
painting, Duccio managed to give to his traditionally painted figures fresh
humanity and life with his newfound sensitivity to color and line. The
delicate Virgins in Perugia, London, and also Siena provide wonderful examples
of Duccio’s poetic rendering of feeling.
While his paintings may
seem rooted in the Byzantine tradition, one can distinguish the first signs
of the International Gothic art that was to influence Simone
Martini and the Lorenzetti
brothers.
Bibliography:
The Art of the Italian Renaissance. Architecture. Sculpture. Painting.
Drawing. Könemann. 1995.
Painting of Europe. XIII-XX centuries. Encyclopedic Dictionary.
Moscow. Iskusstvo. 1999.
Duccio
(Masters of Italian Art Series) by Andrea Weber. Konemann,
1998.
Duccio:
The Maesta by Luciano Bellosi, Duccio. Thames & Hudson,
1999.
Duccio
Di Buoninsegna: The Documents by Jane Satkowski, Hayden B.
J. Maginnis. Georgia Museum of Art, 2000.