Madonna Rucellai

The contract for this enormous panel was signed in Florence in April 1285. A lay confraternity called the Laudesi, men who gathered in the Dominican church of Santa Maria Novella to sing the praises of the Virgin, hired an out-of-towner for it, the Sienese painter Duccio, and asked for a picture of the Madonna for their altar. It is the largest panel painting to survive from the 13th century, and standing under it you feel that scale. Six kneeling angels hold the throne aloft as if it were light. The gold ground and the Virgin's long, tilted features still belong to the Byzantine tradition, but the throne turns gently into space and the drapery falls with a new softness. The name is an accident of moving house. In 1591 the panel was shifted into the nearby Rucellai family chapel, and the family's name stuck to it, which is why a picture made for the Laudesi is now called the Rucellai Madonna.