MAESTà

'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.

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Examples of ''Maestà'' in painting

Reference

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Examples of ''Maestà'' in painting

Main articles: 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.

Reference

★ Duccio, , Giovanna, Ragioneri, Cantini, , 1989 ISBN 88-7737-058-0

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