Italian school (XIX) - Trittico devozionale

DEVOTIONAL TRIPTYCH

Madonna of Sorrows with Saint Peter and Saint Paul

Sienese School, in the manner of the 19th century
Tempera/oil on panel, wooden structure with hinged shutters

Interesting and rare devotional triptych of Italian origin, executed on a wooden support and conceived according to the tradition of small altars and polyptychs intended for private devotion.

The work is composed of a central panel and two mobile side shutters, connected by ancient metal hinges. The particularly foldable structure is one of the most characteristic elements of the object: when closed, the triptych could be protected and easily transported, while at the same time maintaining a function intimately linked to prayer and domestic devotion.

The central panel

In the center is depicted the Virgin Mary, represented in half-length and facing frontally, with the head slightly inclined and the gaze directed downward.

The gathered, melancholic and meditative expression, together with the absence of the Child, leads to reading the figure as a Madonna of Sorrows or Madonna of the Passion, according to a very widespread iconographic type in Italian devotional painting.

The Virgin wears the traditional dark blue-green mantle that envelops the figure broadly, over a red gown. The face, oval in shape, is characterized by elongated eyes, arched eyebrows, a thin nose, and a small, delicately formed mouth.

Particularly interesting is the presence of the punctured halo, created through a series of small circular and decorative motifs. This element constitutes an evident reference to the great tradition of medieval Sienese painting, in which gold, punchwork, and the preciousness of the surfaces played a fundamental role.

The construction of the figure, consciously simple and hieratic, appears in fact distant from the fully eighteenth-century naturalism and seems deliberately to seek that ancient and sacred dimension inherent in the Sienese tradition.

The side shutters

The shutters are occupied by two male figures of apostolic saints.

On the left is recognizably Saint Peter with good probability, characterized by the mature man’s features, the beard and, above all, the attributes that refer to the keys, his traditional iconographic symbol.

On the right is Saint Paul, recognizable by the ascetic figure, the beard and the attributes traditionally associated with the Apostle of the Gentiles, among which the book and the sword.

The joint presence of Saint Peter and Saint Paul beside the Virgin is particularly significant in the tradition of Christian art: the two apostles constitute the pillars of the apostolic Church and are frequently associated with the figure of the Madonna in devotional compositions.

The figures are depicted in an upright position, with a simplified monumentality. The garments are constructed through broad color fields, with a palette dominated by browns, reds, ochres and deep blues.

The relationship with the Sienese tradition

The main interest of the artifact lies precisely in its deliberate revival of the medieval Sienese painting tradition.

Sienese painting, starting from Duccio di Buoninsegna, Simone Martini, and Pietro Lorenzetti, developed an extraordinary tradition of Marian images destined both for public devotion and private devotion. The very form of the triptych, with a central panel and foldable side shutters, belongs to a very ancient tradition documented in Sienese painting. The National Gallery of Siena conserves, for example, important triptychs in which the panels are conceived as elements of a single structure and are equipped with hinge systems for closing the shutters.

Even more significant is the comparison with the works of Simone Martini and his circle: the National Gallery of Siena preserves a Madonna with Child in which the preciousness of the halos, the refined linearity, and the hieratic character of the figure are fundamental elements of the Sienese language.

Also the comparison with Pietro Lorenzetti is interesting: his Marian triptychs show how the image of the Virgin could simultaneously assume a strongly iconic character and an intense emotional participation.

The present artifact should of course not be confused with such medieval works: its interest lies precisely in the persistence and reinterpretation of those models many centuries later.

A deliberately archaizing taste

The choice to realize an image of the Virgin with such severe and ancient characteristics can be related to the particularly important in Tuscany phenomenon of rediscovering ancient painting and medieval sacred images.

In 18th-century Siena this tradition was by no means alien to the local artistic culture. The production of Giuseppe Nicola Nasini (1657–1736), one of the most important figures of Sienese painting between the 17th and 18th centuries, includes numerous images of the Virgin and Marian subjects; the Italian Cultural Heritage catalog also records a Madonna of Sorrows attributed to the painter.

The comparison is helpful especially on a cultural level, not to propose an attribution to Nasini: in Sienese works of the period there remains a strong interest in the local religious tradition, while sacred painting continues to oscillate between Baroque language, classicism, and the recovery of older formulas.

The triptych preserves a very evident ancient patina, with numerous abrasions, losses of the paint film, especially along the edges and on the shutters.

There are also signs of wear, small lacunae, craquelure, and chromatic alterations due to age. The wooden structure shows the normal signs of aging and handling proper to a devotional object used and moved over time.

These elements, while affecting legibility of some details, contribute to the strong material presence of the object and document its long conservation history.

It is important to emphasize that the reference to Duccio, Simone Martini, Pietro Lorenzetti and to the tradition of the great Sienese masters should be understood as a historical-stylistic comparison and not as an attribution of the work to those artists.