Rucellai Madonna

Commissioned in 1285 by a lay confraternity for the Florentine church of Santa Maria Novella, this is the largest panel painting of its century, nearly four and a half meters tall. Duccio, the founding master of the Sienese school, sets the enthroned Virgin against gold but lets a new grace enter: a rose-colored throne turned at an angle, a rippling gold hem tracing the blue mantle, and six angels who kneel to steady the throne as though it floated. Where his Florentine contemporary Cimabue stays grave and monumental, Duccio is lyrical and courtly - the two poles of late thirteenth-century Italian painting.