The Madonna and Child

This rare, early Madonna and Child was formerly given by Everett Fahy to Segna di Buonaventura, under which attribution it was sold at Christie’s in 1997. The painting is a rather unusual survival: a stepped line is visible to the naked eye running a jagged course from the lower left corner of the panel, reaching a pinnacle just to the left of the Madonna’s chin, and then continuing along a jagged course off to the upper right through the Christ child’s chest and along the side of his proper left cheek. Everything below this line is a modern addition, likely created in an effort to salvage the upper portion with the figures’ faces -- perhaps due to some sort of irreparable damage to the original bottom half of the composition. Almost certainly, at the same time this reconstruction took place, the upper portion of the painting was moved to a new panel, possibly because the original support was no longer stable.

Notwithstanding its current state, the painting was obviously once venerated as an object of great devotion. Punctures in the panel around the Madonna’s head are surely evidence of a crown or similar ornament made of precious metals that would have been affixed to her head and helped link her, for contemporary worshippers, to the Byzantine icon tradition that was still very much alive in Italy. In Siena, the great Duccio di Buoninsegna (along with his Florentine counterpart Giotto di Bondone), had only recently made a humanistic break with these older models, leading Italian painting towards what we now consider the western tradition. Niccolò di Segna – possibly the son of Segna di Buonaventura – emerged from this milieu. He was greatly influenced by the work of Duccio as well as that of Duccio’s close follower, Simone Martini, and may have been a collaborator of Pietro Lorenzetti.

We are grateful to Dr. Laurence B. Kanter for proposing the attribution on the basis of firsthand inspection.