Maestà

Cimabue's Maestà , Basilica of St. Francis in Assisi.

The central panel of Duccio's Maestà with Twenty Angels and Nineteen Saints (1308-1311), Museo dell'Opera del Duomo, Siena.

Maestà, the Italian word for "majesty", designates an iconic formula of the enthroned Madonna with the child Jesus often accompanied with angels and saints. The Maestà is an extension of the "Seat of Wisdom" theme of the seated "Mary Theotokos", "Mary Mother of God", which is a counterpart to the earlier icon of Christ in Majesty, the enthroned Christ that is familiar in Byzantine mosaics.

Paintings depicting the Maestà came into the artistic repertory in the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries, with an increased emphasis on the veneration of Mary. The Maestà was often executed in fresco technique directly on plastered walls or as paintings on gessoed wooden altar panels.

A more domestic representation, suitable to private devotion, is the iconographic theme of Madonna and Child.

Examples of Maestà in painting

Main article: Maestà (Duccio)

The most famous example of the Maestà is the Maestà with Twenty Angels and Nineteen Saints, an altarpiece comprised of many individual paintings commissioned by the city of Siena in 1308 from the artist Duccio di Buoninsegna. The painting was installed in the city's cathedral on June 9, 1311. Although it took a generation for its effect truly to be felt, Duccio's Maestà set Italian painting on a course leading away from the hieratic representations of Byzantine art towards more direct presentations of reality.

Other noted examples of the Maestà are Simone Martini's Maestà in the Palazzo Pubblico, Siena, or Cimabue's fresco in the Basilica of San Francesco d'Assisi.

References

• Ragioneri, Giovanna. Duccio. Florence: Cantini. 1989 ISBN 88-7737-058-0.