The Redeemer Conferring a Blessing

In 1315 Simone Martini signed a huge fresco on the wall of the council hall in Siena's Palazzo Pubblico, the town hall, a Maestà with the Virgin enthroned among saints and angels. Six years later he came back and reworked parts of it himself. Critics date this small panel to the same years, between 1315 and 1320, because its drawing and colour are so close to that wall.

The image itself is much older. Christ appears half-length and straight on, his right hand raised in blessing and his left resting on a book, a formula Byzantine painters had used for centuries. Simone keeps the formula and makes it Sienese, with a finer line and lighter, more delicate colour.

The panel is less than 40 centimetres high. The museum, which attributes it to Simone, suggests it may once have been the top of a polyptych, an altarpiece of several panels, that is otherwise lost.