National Gallery of Art NATIONAL GALLERY OF ART ONLINE EDITIONS Italian Paintings of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries Duccio di Buoninsegna Sienese, c. 1250/1255 - 1318/1319 The Calling of the Apostles Peter and Andrew 1308-1311 tempera on panel painted surface: 42.7 × 45.5 cm (16 13/16 × 17 15/16 in.) overall: 43.3 × 46.2 × 4.4 cm (17 1/16 × 18 3/16 × 1 3/4 in.) framed: 53.3 x 55.9 x 4.4 cm (21 x 22 x 1 3/4 in.) Samuel H. Kress Collection 1939.1.141 ENTRY The episode illustrated in the panel is that recounted in the synoptic Gospels of the calling of the first two apostles: Jesus [fig. 1], walking by the Sea of Galilee, accosts Simon, called Peter, and Andrew, his brother, as they are casting a net into the sea, and invites them: “Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.” [1] The composition conforms to the iconographic scheme already familiar in Sienese art in the thirteenth century, [2] though enriched by such details as the motif of the net full of fishes and Peter’s timid gesture of remonstrance, reported only by Luke (“Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man!”). The painting was the fourth of the nine scenes ([fig. 2] [fig. 3] [fig. 4] [fig. 5] [fig. 6] [fig. 7] [fig. 8] [fig. 9]) representing episodes of the public ministry of Jesus, arranged in the predella on the rear side of the altarpiece, the side turned towards the apse [fig. 10] (see also Reconstruction). It was a kind of introduction to the narrative of the Passion, recounted in the twenty-six scenes of the main register of the back of the Maestà and the seven postmortem scenes placed in the gables [fig. 11] (see also The Calling of the Apostles Peter and Andrew 1 © National Gallery of Art, Washington National Gallery of Art NATIONAL GALLERY OF ART ONLINE EDITIONS Italian Paintings of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries Reconstruction). The front side [fig. 12] (see also Reconstruction), facing the nave, was dedicated to the glorification of the Virgin Mary, to whom the cathedral was consecrated. In the main register she appears enthroned, surrounded by twenty angels and ten saints. In the upper register was a gallery of ten busts of apostles, while the predella illustrated seven stories of the childhood of Christ interspersed with six figures of prophets (see entry for The Nativity with the Prophets Isaiah and Ezekiel). The stories of the death and glorification of the Virgin appeared in the seven panels of the gable. Above these latter, at the very top of the altarpiece, on both sides of the work, small panels with busts of angels flanked further lost images. The altarpiece of monumental dimensions and complex structure, of which The Nativity and The Calling of the Apostles formed part, is unusually well documented. [3] The procedures regulating the execution of the work and the payments to be made to the artist were meticulously described in a document dated October 9, 1308. It obliged Duccio to conduct the enterprise continuously, without any interruption, and without taking on any other work. It also stipulated that the hours of any absences from his workshop should be deducted from his daily remuneration. The wording of the document, and the fact that it fails to specify the subject or structure of the altarpiece, suggests that it was not in fact the original contract but a supplement to it, presumably prompted by the excessive slowness in the progress of the execution. By October 1308, therefore, Duccio probably had been at work on the Maestà for some time. On the other hand, we do have a secure terminus ante quem for the completion of the altarpiece: on June 9, 1311, some musicians were paid for having accompanied it as it was being transported, in triumphal procession, from the artist’s workshop to the cathedral. [4] Subsequent events in the history of the work also can be followed almost step by step, thanks to the rich surviving documentation. Art historical discussion of the Maestà has concentrated mainly on the problem of reconstructing the original appearance of the dismantled and in part dispersed ensemble. An exception is James Stubblebine’s attempts to distinguish the parts attributable to various assistants who hypothetically participated in its execution. [5] The only fully autograph parts, in his view, were the large image of the Maestà itself on the front side and the predella below, while the rest of the altarpiece was attributable to various of the main Sienese painters of the early Trecento. In particular, the rear predella, of which this panel formed part, was, according to Stubblebine, painted by Pietro Lorenzetti (Sienese, active 1306 - 1345). More recent The Calling of the Apostles Peter and Andrew 2 © National Gallery of Art, Washington National Gallery of Art NATIONAL GALLERY OF ART ONLINE EDITIONS Italian Paintings of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries studies have not accepted this attribution, at variance with the stylistic data, and the wording of the contract of 1308 also apparently contradicts it: a daily remuneration for Duccio was stipulated as “sixteen soldi of Sienese money for each day that the said Duccio shall work with his own hands on the said panel.” [6] In any case, the extraordinary stylistic coherence of the altarpiece seems to exclude the participation of artists who had already completed their apprenticeship and were able to express themselves with a style of their own—in other words, artists other than those of Duccio’s shop. Duccio, of course, would not have tackled single-handedly the daunting task of painting the eighty or so images of various size that make up the Maestà: he would have undoubtedly entrusted to others the largely mechanical realization of the more decorative parts. His assistants, following the outlines of his drawing, would have intervened in the painting of the less demanding areas of the settings, architectural backdrops, and draperies. But it is equally certain that the master rigorously controlled the work of his assistants, reserving for himself the task not only of painting the faces, or the bodies in movement, but also of revising and finishing the passages he had not personally painted himself. [7] Discussion has also focused on how best to interpret the iconography of the scenes on the back of the Maestà, [8] which remains in some respects problematic. But art historical analysis has been especially prolific, as noted above, in trying to reconstruct its original appearance. This task, made difficult by the dismemberment of the altarpiece at an early date and the loss of some of its components, was systematically tackled for the first time by Eduard Dobbert (1885), a scholar whose knowledge of the front predella was limited to six scenes and six figures of prophets. [9] He rightly intuited that the sequence of the stories of the childhood of Christ must have begun with The Annunciation [fig. 2], that the scenes must have been interspersed with figures of prophets, and that the predella as a whole must have been as broad as the main panel of the Maestà above. Of the back predella, Dobbert seemed familiar only with The Wedding at Cana [fig. 5], which had remained in the Opera del Duomo in Siena, but he succeeded in correctly guessing the subjects of five other scenes. [10] Dobbert assumed that the number of episodes in the predella must have been identical on both sides of the altarpiece; so it followed that the scenes relating to the public life of Jesus, the first of which must have been a lost Baptism of Christ, would have been similarly interspersed with figures of prophets. Curt Weigelt (1909) accepted Dobbert’s reconstruction of the front predella but proposed the presence of ten stories in the rear predella (adding to the subjects already taken into consideration the The Calling of the Apostles Peter and Andrew 3 © National Gallery of Art, Washington National Gallery of Art NATIONAL GALLERY OF ART ONLINE EDITIONS Italian Paintings of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries Temptation in the Wilderness, Temptation on the Mount [fig. 4], and the Temptation on the Temple [fig. 3], the latter a panel he himself had rediscovered). [11] Weigelt was in error in assuming that the gable zones were filled by eight panels of identical size on both sides. [12] This error was corrected in the reconstruction proposed by Vittorio Lusini (1912), who intuited the presence of a panel of larger size at the center of the upper tier: an image of identical width to that of the Crucifixion below. The two central panels, he conjectured, would have been composed of the now lost scenes of the Coronation of the Virgin (on the front side) and the Ascension (on the back), each of which would have been flanked by three gable panels on either side: the last episodes of the life of Mary above the Maestà and the postmortem stories of Christ on the back. This suggestion has in general been endorsed by more recent studies, whereas the reconstruction proposed by Lusini of a predella with as many as fifteen compartments (nine stories and six prophets) below the Maestà and eleven in the predella on the opposite side has not been accepted. [13] In more recent decades, general consensus has been reached regarding the nine episodes of the rear predella. Weigelt’s reconstruction of the front predella has also been accepted. It is also generally conceded that one of the stories of the public life of Jesus and the two scenes filling the front and rear of the central gable have been lost. [14] A second order of gable panels with busts of angels, some of them still extant, is also a generally accepted hypothesis. [15] The important research by John White (1973, 1979) has permitted the original dimensions of the Maestà to be established in a plausible way. It measured, according to White, 439 cm in width, while the predella would have been about 450 cm long. The altarpiece would have been supported by two robust lateral pillars or buttresses, with a width of some 30 cm. [16] The overall height of the Maestà remains difficult to calculate, since the gabled elements at the center of the altarpiece are now missing. Sporadic attempts to identify the lost panels with surviving paintings have not met with acceptance in the literature. Alessandro Conti thought that Coronation of the Virgin in Budapest (Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest, no. 16) was a surviving fragment of the central panel of the upper tier on the front side. [17] The proposal is interesting, since the painting in question undoubtedly has Duccesque characteristics and its proportions (contrary to what has been claimed) do not seem at variance with those of the Maestà. Moreover, a witness as trustworthy as Lorenzo Ghiberti maintained that the Coronation did appear on the front side of the altarpiece. So, while we may admit that the pictorial treatment of the panel in Budapest reveals a hand inferior to that of Duccio himself, we ought not to dismiss The Calling of the Apostles Peter and Andrew 4 © National Gallery of Art, Washington National Gallery of Art NATIONAL GALLERY OF ART ONLINE EDITIONS Italian Paintings of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries too hastily the hypothesis that it originally formed part of the Maestà. [18] Another hypothesis, formulated more recently by the present writer (1982, 1990), concerns the missing first scene of the back of the predella. [19] It seems to me that it can be identified with the little painting also in the museum in Budapest, Saint John the Baptist Bearing Witness [fig. 2]. In general, previous proposals for the reconstruction of the Maestà assumed for this part of the predella an image (perhaps the one that was still visible in the sacristy of the cathedral in 1798 and then disappeared) representing the Baptism of Christ or the Temptation in the Wilderness, though the theme of the Baptist Bearing Witness was also considered a possible subject. [20] The Budapest panel, which is in poor condition and perhaps for this very reason sold by the Opera del Duomo, represents a rare subject; very likely it formed part of a larger complex of which, however, no other component has yet been identified. Usually it has been connected with the activity of Ugolino da Siena. Might it instead have formed part of the altarpiece over the high altar in the cathedral? In its present condition it is very difficult to judge, but both the circumstance that Giovanni Battista Cavalcaselle (who had perhaps been able to see it, in the mid-nineteenth century, in better condition than it is now) did not hesitate to attribute it to Duccio [21] and the slenderness of the arguments with which art historians have tried to deny that it formed part of the predella of the Maestà concur to make its belonging to this work an option that still, in my view, remains valid. [22] The original appearance of the Maestà, and in particular of the back predella, thus still remains a discussed problem. What remains unchallenged, on the other hand, is the artistic quality of the two panels now in the National Gallery of Art, and on this point a further brief comment should be made. The particular accomplishment of execution of the paintings in the lower zones of the Maestà has long been recognized. Some have tried to explain this phenomenon by assuming that the painter left less room there for the intervention of studio assistants than in the less visible parts, in the upper tiers of the altarpiece. [23] Others emphasize, more plausibly, the more retardataire style detectable in the panels that would have adorned the gables of the work. They point out that the work would have proceeded from top to bottom, and suggest that during the long gestation of the enterprise Duccio was able to experiment with new solutions and to modify his initial project. [24] The painstaking execution, accomplished technique, concise narrative, and expressive emotion in the figures that populate the stories of the predella, where the perspective incongruities present in the gable panels and in The Calling of the Apostles Peter and Andrew 5 © National Gallery of Art, Washington National Gallery of Art NATIONAL GALLERY OF ART ONLINE EDITIONS Italian Paintings of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries the stories of the Passion no longer appear, would therefore depend on their later dating, though this cannot be any later than June 30, 1311. [25] If we compare a passage such as the Calling of the Apostles Peter and Andrew with the similar scene of the Apparition of Jesus on the Sea of Tiberius (Museo dell’Opera del Duomo, Siena), we will immediately feel the greater spaciousness of the composition of the painting now in the Gallery. The figures are smaller and fewer but characterized by particular fluency and eloquence in gesture [fig. 13]. Similar aspects can also be detected in the predella panel of the Nativity [fig. 14], especially if the painting is compared, for example, with one of the last episodes of the life of Mary, recounted in the gable panels. In the Nativity, by contrast, a large number of figures are included, and yet the scene does not seem unduly crowded. In spite of some archaic features, such as the adoption of a larger scale for the figure of Mary than for the other figures, or the incongruity of the roof of the stable, seen from below on the right side and from above on the left, Duccio’s “digressive approach to narration” [26] succeeds in both creating convincing spatial effects and combining the various episodes into a coherent composition. This is also thanks to the master’s subtle analysis of the conduct of the protagonists, who, with their intense emotional participation, render the narrative vivid, complex, and humanly credible. Miklós Boskovits (1935–2011) March 21, 2016 COMPARATIVE FIGURES The Calling of the Apostles Peter and Andrew 6 © National Gallery of Art, Washington National Gallery of Art NATIONAL GALLERY OF ART ONLINE EDITIONS Italian Paintings of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries fig. 2 Duccio di Buoninsegna, Saint John the Baptist Bearing Witness, c. 1308–1311, tempera on panel transferred to canvas, Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest fig. 1 Detail of Christ, Duccio di Buoninsegna, The Calling of the Apostles Peter and Andrew, 1308–1311, tempera on panel, National Gallery of Art, Washington, Samuel H. Kress Collection The Calling of the Apostles Peter and Andrew 7 © National Gallery of Art, Washington National Gallery of Art NATIONAL GALLERY OF ART ONLINE EDITIONS Italian Paintings of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries fig. 4 Duccio di Buoninsegna, Temptation on the fig. 3 Duccio di Buoninsegna, Temptation on the Temple, Mountain, 1308–1311, tempera on panel, Frick Collection, 1308–1311, tempera on panel, Museo dell'Opera del New York. Image © The Frick Collection, New York Duomo, Siena. Image: Soprintendenza per le Belle Arti e il Paesaggio di Siena, Grosseto ed Arezzo The Calling of the Apostles Peter and Andrew 8 © National Gallery of Art, Washington National Gallery of Art NATIONAL GALLERY OF ART ONLINE EDITIONS Italian Paintings of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries fig. 5 Duccio di Buoninsegna, The Wedding at Cana, fig. 6 Duccio di Buoninsegna, Christ and the Samaritan 1308–1311, tempera on panel, Museo dell'Opera del Woman, 1310–1311, tempera on panel, Thyssen- Duomo, Siena. Image: Soprintendenza per le Belle Arti e il Bornemisza Museum, Madrid. Image © Museo Thyssen- Paesaggio di Siena, Grosseto ed Arezzo Bornemisza, Madrid The Calling of the Apostles Peter and Andrew 9 © National Gallery of Art, Washington National Gallery of Art NATIONAL GALLERY OF ART ONLINE EDITIONS Italian Paintings of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries fig. 8 Duccio di Buoninsegna, The Transfiguration, fig. 7 Duccio di Buoninsegna, Healing of the Man Born 1308–1311, tempera on panel, The National Gallery, Blind, 1307/1308–1311, tempera on panel, The National London. Image © National Gallery London/Art Resource, Gallery, London. Image © National Gallery London/Art NY Resource, NY The Calling of the Apostles Peter and Andrew 10 © National Gallery of Art, Washington