"I am Duccio," said Duccio, and Art Guy in Jeans dug it.
When Duccio created Siena's Altarpiece, the humongous Miesta, people thought it was freaky, people thought it was huge, and people thought it was so awesome that it was time to declare 3 bank holidays. So they did, and they paraded the giant altarpiece around the city. We're talking circa 1300 here. Was peak interest in the art world supposed to be 1500? I don't know. 3 bank holidays is a lot of days to parade around a cathedral altarpiece, you'd think maybe we were in some kind of Renaissance then.
But whoa, whoa, back up. Isn't Duccio more medieval?
Art Guy in Jeans would like to sit down and discuss this for a minute. Duccio's style is not what we would associate with the Renaissance, is it? At least not the traditional view of it. The perspective is...lacking, the figures are...stacked, the colors are...unnaturally bright and vibrant, the drapery is...stylized. What's so great about it?
"All those things you just mentioned," says our hero.
Siena and Florence were rivals, bitter ones. Florence's big guy at the time was Giotto; Siena's was Duccio. Weighty figures, linear perspective, and narrative focus were among Giotto's innovations. That just wasn't Duccio's or Siena's bag. Siena isn't about linearity. Just look at the streets. Look at the difference between the Piazza del Campo in Siena and the Piazza della Signoria in Florence, grand squares meant to outshine each other. Siena's is curvaceous and decorative. Florence's is heavy and authoritative. They both rock, and they were both innovative.
Back to Duccio. Compare his Rucellai Madonna to Giotto's Ognissanti Madonna. Duccio goes with a highly refined aesthetic rich with color, decoration, and other-worldliness. As you might know, I'm ripping a lot of this off my Syracuse-in-Florence Black Death professor Jennifer Cook. I learned this stuff in her class, and I highly recommend it if you take the Syracuse Junior Abroad Program in Florence.
Our hero wants to proceed with Duccio. Duccio is majestic, Duccio is powerful, Duccio is endlessly creative. Duccio is technically advanced, Duccio is Siena's standard for beauty (and you can't argue with Siena's beauty), and Duccio is an icon. Later Sienese innovators, such as Simone Martini and the Lorenzetti Brothers, were paying lip service to this king of Sienese color, even though their work uses a lot of Giotto's innovations.
Duccio, Cimabue, and Giotto. Just look at their stuff. They've each perfected a style. Art Guy would hesitate to say, for instance, that Giotto is taking what Cimabue was doing and just going the next step. Cimabue is no stepping stone. He's the master of the Cimabue style, and the Cimabue style is VERY distinct. Same thing goes for Duccio in spades. He went full-steam ahead with his own take on colorful religious other-worldly art, and the result is spectacular.
Art Guy in Jeans demands full praise of Duccio and his achievements, and he would like to see the artistic "Renaissance" as a process beginning almost right after the sack of Rome and going through hundreds of different trials and tribulations including the Byzantine, the Romanesque, the Gothic, the Sienese school, the Black Death style, the Giottesque Revival, the Northern 15th century, the Medici patronage era, the Perugino style, the style in the manner of Michelangelo (aka Mannerism), the Italian Baroque, the Northern Baroque, and so on and so forth until contemporary art. Our hero thinks there was a high interest in art throughout this entire period; some call it the "Long Renaissance." Calling half of those things the Renaissance really isn't fair is it? There is just as big a leap from Piero della Francesca to Leonardo da Vinci as there is from Duccio to Masaccio. Duccio marks the absolute peak of one of these niches. Go Duccio.
Just look at this stuff, man!
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