Virgin and Child Enthroned Ambrogio Lorenzetti

The first half of the fourteenth century was the golden age of Sienese painting. The outstanding masters of this period – Duccio di Buoninsegna, Simone Martini, and Pietro and Ambrogio Lorenzetti – earned a leading position in European painting with their revolutionary, new compositions, their astonishing observations of nature, and their unprecedented depictions of human figures. Ambrogio Lorenzetti, Pietro’s younger brother, experimented incessantly with his compositions: in this work he portrayed the two figures frontally, aligning them along the central vertical axis of the painting. The artist’s intense interest in the depiction of space is evident in the boldly executed foreshortening of the Virgin’s right hand and the Child’s left foot. This work is the central fragment of a larger composition. The throne was originally surrounded by six-winged seraphim, the guardians of the Lord’s throne; the remains of the wings of one seraph are still visible at the bottom right. The Virgin and Child were once flanked by saints on either side, but all we can deduce today is that one of them was Saint John the Evangelist: the Infant Christ was presenting him with an instruction, inscribed in Latin, to record one of the most important tenets of the Christian faith: “Write: A new command I give you: Love one another.”