Madonna and Child (Duccio)

This small panel for private devotion - one of only about a dozen surviving works accepted as Duccio's own - shows the Christ Child reaching up to push aside his mother's veil, a tender, particular gesture that breaks the icon's age-old stillness. A painted parapet runs along the base, a low ledge dividing sacred from real space, while scorch marks on the original frame record centuries of candles set before it in prayer. Duccio, the founder of the Sienese school, softens the rigid Byzantine formula with a new sweetness, and the Virgin's mournful gaze already looks past her son toward his death.