Met acquires rare Duccio

While most art institutions are pinching pennies these days, the Metropolitan Museum of Art recently splurged on a masterpiece by the Italian painter Duccio di Buoninsegna (active 1278-1319). It has been widely reported in the press that the museum spent more than $45 million to purchase the tempera- and gold-on-wood Madonna and Child, also known as the Stroganoff Madonna (ca. 1300), named after its first recorded owner, Count Grigorii Stroganoff, who died in 1910. In announcing the museum's most expensive acquisition in its history, director Philippe de Montebello stressed the rarity and importance of the 8-by-10-inch work, which he says will quickly become one of the signature pieces in the museum's collection. He also pointed out that the money used for the purchase came mainly from a long-held fund for new acquisitions supplemented by targeted fundraising and not money intended for operations, capital construction or maintenance.

Along with his contemporary Giotto, Duccio was one of the key figures in the development of the Italian Renaissance. Only about a dozen works by the Siena-based artist are known to exist, and most of those are in fragmentary condition. The Madonna and Child, which has been only rarely exhibited, is a complete and independent work painted soon after Duccio visited Assisi, where he studied Giotto's recently completed fresco cycle of the life of Saint Francis. Duccio's pioneering work conveys an emotional content and a lyrical sense of color that mark a clear break with medieval and Byzantine painting. The painting will make its Met debut some time this winter.