Description

Reproduction of art by Duccio di Buoninsegna (copyright copy by Silvia Salvadori). Reproduction of Sienese school paintings of the '300 and' 400 made with the original technique: Tempera on gilded gold leaf table. WORK DRAWN FROM DUCCIO DI BUONINSEGNA. Icon painted in tempera and pure gold on an ancient table according to the ancient recipes of the Sienese school and with the same pictorial style as Duccio di Buoninsegna. Icon of Mary Magdalene, pure gold background. Polyptych Madonna and Child with Saints Agnes, John the Evangelist, John the Baptist and Mary Magdalene; in the upper register: Prophets and Patriarchs; in the cupids: Christ the Redeemer and Angels. The polyptych with complex architecture and carpentry, represents the oldest example that has come down to us as an altarpiece with several registers of figurations. It constitutes the immediate precedent of some of the more elaborate altarpieces made from the end of the second decade of the century; from the polyptych by Simone Martini for the church of Santa Caterina in Pisa to the one commissioned in 1320 to Pietro Lorenzetti for the parish church of Santa Maria in Arezzo, up to the vast complex of Ugolino di Nerio destined for the high altar of the Florentine church of Santa Croce. The polyptych entered the National Art Gallery of Siena in 1892, coming from the Hospital of Santa Maria della Scala. It had to be destined to the primitive "ecclesia sive oratorium" of the hospital, whose construction was granted by bishop Buonfiglio in 1257 and ratified by Pope Alexander IV in 1257: the first nucleus of the building which, still remembered as "capella hospitalis" in 1316, it would become the church of the Virgin Annunziata. Both for the complexity of the structure and for the monumental amplification of the group of the Madonna and Child, most scholars believe the polyptych to be an extreme work of Duccio's activity, to be placed in the lapse between the completion of the Majesty (1311) and the death of the artist. History of St. Mary Magdalene: St. Mary Magdalene or Magdala was, according to the New Testament, a woman disciple of Jesus; she is revered as a saint by the Catholic Church, which celebrates her feast on July 22nd. Saint Mary Magdalene is described both in the New Testament and in the apocryphal Gospels. Santa Maria Maddalena is not mentioned in other sources. The name Maria Maddalena derives from "Magdala", a small town on the western shore of Lake Tiberias, also known as Genezaret. The Gospel narratives quote St. Mary Magdalene in a few verses, making us realize how St. Mary Magdalene was one of the most important and devoted disciples of Jesus. St. Mary Magdalene was among the few who could witness the crucifixion and, according to some gospels, she became the first witness eye of the resurrection.