Artifact World Gallery
Get the iOS app

The Calling of the Apostles Peter and Andrew by Duccio di Buoninsegna

Duccio di Buoninsegna · 1308-1311

View the artwork: The Calling of the Apostles Peter and Andrew →

Duccio's The Calling of the Apostles Peter and Andrew was painted between 1308 and 1311. It once belonged to the Maestà, the largest and most celebrated altarpiece of its time. Siena Cathedral paraded it through the streets for three days before installing it. Today the panel lives at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.

Look at the fishing net beneath the boat. Duccio painted the mesh so thin that the fish remain visible through it, a startling naturalistic detail for 1308. The gold background is pure Byzantine eternity, but that net reaches toward something new.

When the cathedral removed the Maestà in 1506, they sawed the massive altarpiece into saleable pieces. This panel scattered through the art market for nearly four centuries. It passed from a small Italian collection in 1879 to the dealer Charles Fairfax Murray, then the British collector Robert Henry Benson, and finally Duveen Brothers, who sold it to Clarence Mackay in New York. The Kress Foundation gave it to the National Gallery in 1939.

So a panel that launched with trumpet fanfares nearly vanished into private drawing rooms. What other pieces of the Maestà are still waiting to be found?

#arthistory #sienesepainting #duccio

Details

Not sky but eternity , the flat gold signals divine timelessness; it makes the narrative float outside history even as the figures enact a specific human moment.
Not sky but eternity , the flat gold signals divine timelessness; it makes the narrative float outside history even as the figures enact a specific human moment.
The initiating presence of the panel: halo designates divinity before a word is spoken, and his gaze anchors the entire left-to-right reading of the calling.
The initiating presence of the panel: halo designates divinity before a word is spoken, and his gaze anchors the entire left-to-right reading of the calling.
The floating threshold: it separates the brothers from Christ and from dry land, making it the last material anchor of their former lives.
The floating threshold: it separates the brothers from Christ and from dry land, making it the last material anchor of their former lives.
Draped in dark red over blue, Christ is the tallest figure; Duccio uses scale as hierarchy, a Byzantine convention that survives even as the figures edge toward naturalism.
Draped in dark red over blue, Christ is the tallest figure; Duccio uses scale as hierarchy, a Byzantine convention that survives even as the figures edge toward naturalism.
The panel's most virtuoso passage: the mesh is painted thin enough that the fish beneath remain legible through it , a rare naturalistic leap for 1308.
The panel's most virtuoso passage: the mesh is painted thin enough that the fish beneath remain legible through it , a rare naturalistic leap for 1308.
Transcript

In 1311, Siena carried a fifteen-foot altarpiece through the streets. They sang hymns for three days. Duccio was paid 3,000 gold florins. Then in 1506, the cathedral took a saw to it. This panel vanished. Four centuries of silence. Christ stands on solid rock, calling two men from their boat. Their net is translucent. You can see the fish through the mesh. He painted a visual pun: the fish they leave for the men they will catch. In 1879, it surfaced in a small town collection. Then a dealer, a baron, Duveen.