25. Probably Duccio di Buoninsegna. Surrender of a Town, Possibly Giuncarico, to Siena, 1314? Fresco, 7 ft. 25/8 in. x 12 ft. 5 in. (2.2 x 3.8 m). Sala del Mappamondo, Palazzo Pubblico, Siena
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restoration campaign in 1980 – 81, represents the transfer of authority of an embattled town to a Sienese official (fig. 25). In the fresco we find the same use of a double scale — one for the figures and another for the landscape — as in The Temptation on the Mountain (fig. 21), and the sharply chiseled edges of the plateau on which the town is sited and the marvelous structural clarity of the buildings are also characteristic of Duccio. The council chamber fresco makes a compelling claim to being his only surviving secular work, done, moreover, for the most important room of a major civic building. Space and a digressive approach to narration are certainly two features that distinguish Duccio’s legacy. But to better underscore another key aspect of his art — the refined lyricism of his Madonnas and their profoundly sacred quality — it is worth returning briefly to his earliest documented work: the Ruccellai Madonna (fig. 26), painted twenty some years before the Maestà. Many of the traits that come into full flower in Duccio’s mature work make their first, budlike appearance in this majestic and beautiful altarpiece he painted for a confraternity chapel in Santa Maria Novella. In this case the most telling comparison is not with a work by Giotto, who in 1285 was not yet twenty, but with a painting by Giotto’s teacher, Cimabue (the artist to whom Vasari mistakenly ascribed the Ruccellai Madonna), for there can be little doubt that Duccio’s early work was deeply influenced by the painting of his Florentine elder, and vice versa. Cimabue’s chronology is far from clear, but the picture that bears most directly on the character of the Ruccellai Madonna is a large altarpiece he painted, perhaps in the years around 1280, for the Church of San Francesco in Pisa (fig. 27). In this enormous panel of the Madonna and Child the Florentine painter made a number of advances over earlier treatments of the theme. The throne, imagined as a large wood chair with a footstool, is viewed obliquely so that its structure is clearly discernible. The Virgin’s body fills the space of the throne, and her feet are arranged on the individual steps of the footstool. Not surprisingly, certain problems go unresolved: How, for example, can