The ''Madonna del Bordone'' (‘The

Madonna Madonna Louise Ciccone (; ; born August 16, 1958) is an American singer-songwriter and actress. Widely dubbed the " Queen of Pop", Madonna has been noted for her continual reinvention and versatility in music production, songwriting, a ...

of the pilgrim's staff’) is a panel painting by the Italian painter

Coppo di Marcovaldo Coppo di Marcovaldo (c. 1225 – c. 1276) was a Florentine painter in the Italo-Byzantine style, active in the middle of the thirteenth century, whose fusion of both the Italian and Byzantine art, Byzantine styles had great influence on gen ...

, in the church of Santa Maria dei Servi in

Siena Siena ( , ; lat, Sena Iulia) is a city in Tuscany, Italy. It is the capital of the province of Siena. The city is historically linked to commercial and banking activities, having been a major banking center until the 13th and 14th centuri ...

Italy Italy ( it, Italia ), officially the Italian Republic, ) or the Republic of Italy, is a country in Southern Europe. It is located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, and its territory largely coincides with the homonymous geographical re ...

. Signed and dated 1261, the work is the only certain attribution to the Florentine painter. It was painted after he had been taken prisoner in the Battle of Montaperti in 1260, when the Republic of Siena defeated the

Republic of Florence The Republic of Florence, officially the Florentine Republic ( it, Repubblica Fiorentina, , or ), was a medieval and early modern state that was centered on the Italian city of Florence in Tuscany. The republic originated in 1115, when the Flo ...

. Coppo paid his ransom by executing the work. It portrays the

enthroned with a halo and two small angels on her sides. She is enthroned, and supports the blessing Child, who is holding the Book of the Law in his left hand and has a halo surrounded by a jewelled cross. Half a century later, the heads were repainted by a local artist who added a ''

sfumato Sfumato (, ) is a painting technique for softening the transition between colours, mimicking an area beyond what the human eye is focusing on, or the out-of-focus plane. It is one of the canonical painting modes of the Renaissance. Leonardo da V ...

'' style influenced by that of Duccio di Buoninsegna, but different from Coppo's art. X-Ray analyses have shown the original heads to be characterized by Coppo's more typically Byzantine manner of painting. Unlike the concentrated abstraction of contemporary works such as those by

Margaritone d'Arezzo Margarito, Margaritone da Arezzo, or Margaritone d'Arezzo (''fl. c.'' 1250–1290) was an Italian painter from Arezzo in Tuscany. Margaritone's given name was Margarito, but it was transcribed erroneously by Vasari as "Margaritone". It is by ...

, in Coppo's ''Madonna'' the Child is looking in a tender way at his mother, a gesture aiming to humanize his divine status, but perhaps also to represent the love of the Child for the Catholic Church, symbolized by the Madonna. The posture of the two figures is typical of Byzantine painting of the subject.

References

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Madonna del Bordone 1260s paintings Italian paintings Paintings of the Madonna and Child Paintings in Siena