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This large ancona, or altarpiece, represents the type of a gabled Maestà—an enthroned Virgin and Child that became extremely popular throughout central Italy by the late 13th century. The infant Jesus is dressed in a long red gown whose vivid color prefigures his extreme sacrifice. Seated on his Mother’s lap, the Child is portrayed with a calm, mature expression and compose attitude while he blesses with his right hand. Mary looks the opposite way; her sad and worrisome eyes tell that she is aware of the fate awaiting her Son. With the right hand she holds the blooming “rose of Sharon:” the rose of the Song of Songs that identifies Mary as the bride of Solomon, and by association, the Church as the mystic bride of Christ. Finally, on the bottom’s corners of the composition, a bishop saint (left) and a deacon saint (right) appear on a dramatically reduced scale as they face the beholder and bless with their right hands.

The authorship of the Cini Maestà is still uncertain and in fact much disputed. Scholars have long identified the author as the so-called Master of the Horne Triptych, a 14th-century painter whose oeuvre revolves around a three-panel painting housed in Palazzo Corsi, Florence. Indeed, the Horne Triptych, and especially the female saint painted on the left panel, shares with the Cini Maestà not only the very same physiognomic traits, but also the elongated hands, the ornamental motifs and, more broadly, the curving and undulating Gothic lines.

Over time, scholarship has suggested relating the work of the Master of the Horne Triptych to the late production of the so-called Master of Santa Cecilia. This hypothesis is based on the surprising similarities between the Cini Maestà and the Virgin and Child Enthroned in the church of Santa Margherita in Montici, Florence. The comparison between the two paintings shows how the facial type of the Virgin is almost identical and very similar is also the way the blue mantle hikes above Mary’s right knee in heavy folds to reveal the red tunic underneath it. It should also be stressed that the two saints flanking the throne in the Montici painting correspond quite closely—both in size and pose—to those in the Cini Maestà.

More recently, the work of the Master of Santa Cecilia has been tentatively attributed to the Florentine painter Gaddo di Zenobi, father of the more famous Taddeo Gaddi. Trained in the workshop of Grifo di Tancredi, Gaddo learned from his master the motif of depicting figures on radical diverse scales, as Grifo’s Madonna and Child Enthroned shows. That very same style and influence of pre-Giottesque culture can also be found in the Cini Maestà, in which however Gaddo designed the Virgin’s throne in an attempt of perspective, demonstrating how he was trying to keep pace with the innovations of both Duccio and Giotto.

The wooden support has weakened due to the inefficiency of previous repairs and the insertion of pins and additional wooden strip supports. The painting is covered by an opaque and uneven varnish, and the pictorial surface is abraded due to harsh past cleanings. Vertical cracks and fissures are also evident. The numerous cracks in the wooden support are signs of the structural instability of the panel, which will undergo a complete revision to replace weakened support elements. The painting will undergo non-invasive analyses through the use of UV and Infrared photography. XRF testing will help to identify the original pigments. The surface of the painting will be cleaned and the old varnish removed, and traces of old restoration will be taken off. Losses to the pictorial surface will be filled with gesso and inpainted. A final coat of protective varnish will be applied.

Master of the Horne Triptych (Gaddo Gaddi?) (active first half 14th century)
Madonna and Child Enthroned
c. 1310 – 1315, tempera and silver on wood
182 x 103 cm
Palazzo Cini Gallery

Galleria di Palazzo Cini: Homepage

Bacchi, Andrea and Andrea De Marchi, eds. La Galleria di Palazzo Cini. Dipinti, sculture, oggetti d’arte. Venice: Marsilio, 2016

Boskovits, Miklós. “Un nome per il Maestro del Trittico Horne.” Saggi e memorie di storia dell’arte, 27 (2003): 57-70

Zeri, Federico, Mauro Natale and Alessandra Mottola Molfino, eds. Dipinti toscani e oggetti d’arte dalla collezione Vittorio Cini. Vicenza: Neri Pozza Editore, 1984