Madonna mit Kind und sechs Engeln

For centuries this panel sat above a sacristy doorway in the monastery of San Domenico in Perugia, and no one recorded who had painted it. Only in 1911 did a scholar recognise the hand of Duccio, the Sienese master who, around 1300, was easing Italian painting out of stiff Byzantine formulas toward something softer and more human. The tilt of the Virgin's head, the tenderness between her and the child, the six angels leaning in at the sides, all belong to that shift. Restoration later showed that this was never a standalone image. It was the centre of a larger polyptych, an altarpiece of several panels that was broken up and scattered at some point. What survives is the middle of it, gold-ground tempera, its companions long gone.