Madonna Gualino

This Madonna surfaced on the Florence art market in 1910 hidden under a coat of 16th-century overpaint, which restorers stripped away a decade later to uncover a much older panel beneath. It dates to around 1280, the dawn of Sienese painting, and for a long time it was given to the young Duccio di Buoninsegna, though some scholars now argue instead for his older contemporary Cimabue. Whoever held the brush, the panel catches a moment of change: the stiff Byzantine gold is still there, but the Virgin's tilted head and the soft modelling of the Child lean toward the warmer, more human manner Tuscan painting was about to take up. It carries the name of Riccardo Gualino, the Turin industrialist who bought it and gave it to the gallery in 1930.