Madonna and Child by Pietro Lorenzetti

Madonna and Child by Pietro Lorenzetti (c. 1310–15)

Mother and son

The Virgin is shown half-length, filling an arched panel. She wears a deep blue mantle over a rose-pink veil, with a gold star on the mantle at her forehead and another at her shoulder, and a gold-striped band along its edge. Her head tilts towards her son, but her eyes look out at us.

The Child sits on her left arm in an orange-gold dress with red sleeves, a red band trimmed with pearls running over his shoulder. He looks up into her face and takes hold of the edge of her veil with one hand. She supports him with a hand beneath him.

What is new here, English Wikipedia's account of the panel observes, is the weight. The Virgin's body responds to the child she holds, as a real mother's would; in Duccio's Madonnas, which the painting echoes in other ways, her posture is unaffected by the child's weight. That kind of secure hold had appeared in sculptures of the Virgin and Child, from which Lorenzetti may have taken it. The Child's dress is contemporary and elegant.

What time has done

Almost all of the gold that once covered the background has gone, leaving a mottled red-brown surface with only flecks of gilding; the halos, once gold, are now faint rings. The blue of the mantle has worn away at the lower left, and the wooden panel shows at the edges. The faces and hands, and the Child's dress, are much better preserved.

Castiglione d'Orcia

The panel belongs to the church of Santi Stefano e Degna in Castiglione d'Orcia, in the Val d'Orcia. The church, consecrated in 1566, took over the functions and the title of the old parish church of Santa Degna, which stood outside the walls and was demolished in 1787 to enlarge the cemetery. The side chapels were added in a restoration of 1891–92, and the one on the left, the chapel of the Madonna delle Grazie, opened on 17 August 1913, was given to this painting, which is venerated under that title. The Italian Wikipedia article on the church reports that its three most important panels, by Simone Martini, Pietro Lorenzetti and Vecchietta, have been moved to the Pinacoteca in Siena.

Dating

Scholars do not agree on how early the painting is. The Siena museums' record dates it between 1310 and 1315. English Wikipedia places it before 1300 and calls it his earliest surviving painting. Either way, it is an early work, from before the Passion frescoes in the Lower Church of San Francesco at Assisi, now thought to have been painted between 1316 or 1317 and 1319.

Pietro Lorenzetti

Pietro Lorenzetti was born in Siena around 1280 and is recorded as active from about 1306 to 1345. He was the elder brother of Ambrogio Lorenzetti, and together they brought a new naturalism into Sienese painting. Little else is known of his life. He may have worked in Duccio's studio, and his painting shows the influence of Giotto and the sculptor Giovanni Pisano as well. He worked in Assisi, Florence, Pistoia, Cortona and Siena, and probably died in 1348, perhaps of the Black Death.

About this print

Made from a photograph of the whole panel, taken when it was lent to the 2017 Ambrogio Lorenzetti exhibition in Siena. The photograph includes the worn edges of the wood, a little of the grey wall behind it at the upper corners and a dark strip of the display stand along the bottom.

Sources: Wikimedia Commons · Ecomuseo Digitale Terre di Siena (Musei Senesi), "Chiesa dei Santi Stefano e Degna a Castiglione d'Orcia" · Wikipedia, "Pietro Lorenzetti" · Wikipedia (Italian), "Pieve dei Santi Stefano e Degna"