COMPARATIVE STUDY OF MADONNA ENTHRONE

MADONNA ENTHRONE BY CIMABUE

DETAIL FROM MADONNA ENTHRONED WITH EIGHT ANGELS AND FOUR PROPHETS

•The picture originally stood on the high altar of Santa Trinità church in Florence.• The iconography is frequent in medieval painting and represents the Madonna enthroned with Child and angels, a pattern commonly said Maestà as shows the Virgin as Queen of Paradise.• In the lower part are four biblical figures, symbolizing foundations of Christ's kingdom: the prophets Jeremiah and Isaiah under lateral arches, Abraham and King David under the chair of the throne.

                                                         

Maestà, 1280–1285, Uffizi Gallery, Florence

MADONNA ENTHRONE BY GIOTTO

Madonna Enthroned, also known as the Ognissanti Madonna, is a painting by the Italian late medieval artist Giotto di Bondone, housed in the  Uffizi Gallery of Florence, Italy.

It is often celebrated as the first painting of the Renaissance due to its newfound naturalism and escape from the constraints of Gothic art.

It is generally dated to around 1310.  An earlier manuscript document of 1418 also

attributes the painting to Giotto, but it is Ghiberti's autobiography that provides the most solid evidence.

Ognissanti Madonna

Artist Giotto

Year c. 1310

Type Tempera on panel

Dimensions 325 cm × 204 cm (128 in × 80 in)

Location Uffizi Gallery, Florence

 In both the gold coloring used throughout the artwork and the flattened gold background, Giotto's art continued the traditional Italo-Byzantine style so popular in the proto-Renaissance time period.

Giotto's figures however escape the bounds of Byzantine art. His figures are weighty and are reminiscent of three-dimensional sculptures, such as that in classical Roman sculpture.

The Madonna's intricately decorated throne, which itself is an Italian Gothic design, has a very specific use of colored marble as a surface decoration.

This use of marble was a style that ended in the early Christian time period, and thus gives a clue that Giotto was knowledgeable of art of that time period.

MADONNA ENTHRONE BY DUCCIO

Artist Duccio di Buoninsegna

Year 1308–1311

Type Tempera and gold on wood

Dimensions 213 cm × 396 cm (84 in × 156 in)

Location Museo dell'Opera Metropolitana del Duomo, Siena

The Maestà, or Maestà of Duccio is an altarpiece composed of many individual paintings commissioned by the city of Siena in 1308 from the artist Duccio di Buoninsegna.

 The front panels make up a large enthroned Madonna and Child with saints and angels, and apredella of the Childhood of Christ with prophets. 

Duccio's Maestà set Italian painting on a course leading away from the hieratic representations of Byzantine art towards more direct presentations of reality.

The painting was installed in the cathedral of Siena on 9 June 1311.

The altarpiece remained in place until 1711, when it was dismantled in order to distribute the pieces between two altars.