Madonna and Child
| Support Type: | Wood Panel |
| Paint Type: | Tempera |
| Current Location: | The Metropolitan Museum of Art |
| Location History: | The painting was formerly a central panel of a five-panel portable polyptych that was probably commissioned by the civic government of Siena to be used in a governmental or civic context. This panel and its counterparts were used as the side panels of a larger altarpiece in the fifteenth century for the principal chapel of the town hall (the Palazzo Pubblico) of Siena. The five panels of the polyptych were eventually separated over the years and the pieces can now be seen in various collections: Saint Ansanus and the Madonna and Child were moved to the Robert Lehman Collection, Saint Andrew was transferred to the European Paintings collection at the Met, Saint Peter is in the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza in Madrid, and Saint Luke was placed in the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles. The panel of the Madonna and Child was removed from its frame and is now kept at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, in the same frame that was used originally. |
The intimacy of the mother and child is distilled into a language of line, gesture and gold in this small devotional panel by Simone Martini, which was painted around 1326. The face of the Madonna is beautifully rendered in a manner more linear and elegant, a soft oval surrounded by a deep blue mantle, her eyes looking down in silent contemplation, not looking directly at the viewer. Her formal, iconic posture, based on Byzantine models, is softened by the gesture of the Christ Child, seated on her arm, offering her a gesture of tenderness. What sets Martini’s hand apart is the sophistication in the surface: the tooled and punched gold ground behind the figures catches the light unevenly, bringing a subtle shimmer to the flat backdrop, that required the goldsmith’s skills as well as painterly modeling. The decorative refinement of the piece is a result of Martini’s early contact with the goldsmithing traditions of Tuscany’s Sienese and with the innovations of the circle of Giotto’s Sienese counterpart, in whom the emphasis lay in the courtly linear grace that became the hallmark of the Sienese style rather than the Florentine naturalism.