Angel

Duccio di Buoninsegna stands at the founding moment of the Sienese pictorial tradition, and his treatment of angels — developed most fully in the monumental Maestà for Siena Cathedral (1311) — set the iconographic standard for angelic representation in central Italian painting for the following century. An isolated angel panel, if by Duccio himself rather than a close workshop associate, would be among the rarest survivals of his small output; the refined Byzantine-inflected linearity and gold-ground hierarchy of his angelic figures remained influential long after his death. Angels in his work balance the gold-ground otherworldliness of the Byzantine tradition with a new humanity of gesture and expression.

Duccio's angel figures are characterized by the refinement of his gold-ground technique — the delicate incised lines of the gold tooling, the careful transition from the flat gold ground to the modeled three-dimensionality of the figure, and the soft, blended face modeling that gently humanizes the Byzantine prototype.