Stroganoff Madonna and Child, Duccio di Buoninsegna:
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Stroganoff Madonna by Duccio di Buoninsegna Interpretation of Gothic-Style Sienese School Religious Painting MAIN A-Z INDEX

The Stroganoff MadonnaBy Duccio di Buoninsegna.Regarded as one of theGreatest Paintings Ever.

ContentsDescription • Interpretation • Further Resources

Description Painting : Stroganoff Madonna and Child Date : 1300 Artist : Duccio di Buoninsegna (c.1255-1319) Medium : Tempera and gold on wood Genre : Religious history painting Movement : Sienese School of Painting Museum : Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

For explanations of other pictures, see: Famous Paintings Analyzed.

PostersFine art posters of paintingsby Duccio di Buoninsegna, are are widely available online.See also: Poster Art.

Painting AppreciationTo understand Christian art like the Madonna & Child by Duccio Buoninsegna, see our educationalarticle for students:Art Evaluation:How to Appreciate Art.

The Stroganoff Madonna (c.1300), a masterpiece of religious art from the trecento Sienese School of painting, is a small devotional picture, painted in tempera and gold on a wood panel. It is one of the highlights of the permanent collection of New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. Also known as the Stoclet Madonna, it was painted by the headstrong genius Duccio di Buoninsegna (c.1255-1319), and exemplifies the progressive but traditional style of painting which flourished in Siena, during the Proto-Renaissance period (1290-1400), at the same time as Cimabue (c.1240-1302) and Giotto (1270-1337) were developing a more naturalistic style in Assisi, Padua and Florence. A precursor of the International Gothic style, the picture is an important landmark in the transition from Medieval to Renaissance image making and anticipates the works of artists like Simone Martini (1284-1344), Fra Filippo Lippi (1406-69), and ultimately Giovanni Bellini (1435-1516).

More Analysis of Stroganoff Madonna

Duccio’s Style Compared to Giotto’s During the period 1290-1310, Western fine art painting underwent a series of seminal changes introduced by Giotto and Duccio. Both painters explored different ways of pictorializing the Christian message to enable viewers to relate Biblical art to their personal experience of the world, while retaining the mystery of Jesus Christ, and his role in the salvation of Man. Giotto, at Assisi in the 1290s and then at Padua’s Arena Chapel in the 1300s, focused on the creation of more realistic three-dimensional figures, with more naturalistic attributes, and used an early form of perspective to give his pictures extra depth and space. In contrast, Duccio pursued a flatter style of painting derived from Byzantine art, but imbued it with an exquisite sense of colour, as well as a range of carefully articulated figures endowed with a deep human sentiment, so as to achieve an equally inspirational effect: less naturalistic perhaps, but more lyrical, tender and emotional. No less than Giotto’s religious paintings in the Scrovegni/Arena Chapel, Duccio’s Maesta altarpiece for Siena cathedral (1311, Museo dell’Opera del Duomo, Siena) became a major point of reference for the next generation of Tuscan artists.

Devotional Painting While the Maesta was a multi-panelled and very public example of Duccio’s altarpiece art, the Stroganoff Madonna and Child – at roughly 9.5 inches x 6 inches – is a very personal type of art, intended to be hung on a wall and prayed to, like the icons of the Byzantine church. And Duccio’s new and unique ability to endow his holy figures with a physical and emotional dimension was first showcased in this beautiful devotional picture, which is also one of the few "stand-alone" Duccios, not part of any ensemble. Two reasons why the work is so rare and why the Met paid a reported $45 million to secure it.

Parapet Duccio’s Madonna and Child remains a landmark of European painting, for yet another reason. The Madonna is depicted as if standing behind a parapet – one of the earliest instances of the illusionistic device that both connects and separates the timeless space occupied by the divine figures and the real space and time of the viewer. The art historian John White described the Stroganoff Madonna and Child as the "first, lonely forerunner of that long line of Italian Madonnas with a parapet…" At the same time, the work’s monumental pose and beautifully rendered drapery lends it an air of classical sculpture.