and is being distributed. Both artists have enlivened the scene with details culled from contemporary life: the bride’s dress, the banded tablecloth, the striped textile decorating the walls in Giotto’s depiction; the herringbone brick pavement, the ceramic pitchers, the diamond-patterned tablecloth, and the cut-up meat on the dishes in Duccio’s. But whereas the narrative tone in Giotto’s scene is solemn and the action is stilled, in Duccio’s the foreground is a hubbub of activity, and details such as the spindly legged servant with a towel slung over his shoulder who pours a glass of wine for his companion, shown turning backward as he walks away, create the impression of an action unfolding before our eyes. Duccio’s digressive approach to narration defined the character of Sienese painting. The Maestà was commissioned by the Opera del Duomo, the administrative board of the cathedral. This was no mere religious body. Its members were prominent citizens who answered to the civic government, with the ecclesiastical authorities playing an advisory role. The operaio dell’opera del duomo (master of the cathedral works) was appointed and salaried by the city: to a fourteenth-century Sienese, the distinction we draw between civic and religious life would have been incomprehensible. Indeed, the kinds of commissions found in civic and ecclesiastical buildings overlapped. In 1315 the Nove hired Simone Martini to fresco the end wall of their council chamber with an enormous Maestà, an updated version of Duccio’s altarpiece. Other walls of the room were decorated with images celebrating the expansion of the territory under Sienese rule, and one of these, dramatically uncovered in a
24. Giotto di Bondone. The Wedding at Cana, ca. 1305. Fresco. Cappella degli Scrovegni (Arena Chapel), Padua
29