polittico con la madonna e santi

Bartolomeo Bulgarini's polyptych with the Madonna and Saints (c. 1355) is a multi-compartment altarpiece in the format that dominated Italian Gothic church decoration throughout the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Bulgarini was among the most accomplished Sienese painters of the mid-Trecento, maintaining the city's distinctive artistic tradition during the difficult decades following the catastrophic Black Death of 1348. The polyptych format, with its multiple pointed-arch panels arranged around a central Madonna, provided a comprehensive devotional program presenting the Virgin and her saintly intercessors to the faithful.

Tempera and gold on multiple joined panels with pointed-arch frames in the traditional Sienese polyptych format. Bulgarini's technique demonstrates the school's hallmark features: rich ultramarine and vermilion pigments, elaborate gold tooling, and figures combining linear elegance with substantial volumetric presence.