This devotional painting was once part of a larger altarpiece. It has been suggested that the panel was cut down to the unusual shape we see today when it was removed from its original setting.[1] The work is typical of Matteo di Giovanni, whose gold-laden style was popular in Siena where he maintained a successful workshop selling religious paintings such as this to wealthy and conservative noble families. Although aware of contemporary Florentine innovations that portrayed biblical figures within everyday scenes, Matteo’s style remained firmly embedded in idealised Sienese ethereal depictions.[2]

Adorned in her heavenly blue mantle the Madonna holds a chubby Christ Child clothed in a little rose-coloured tunic. He presents the viewer, at whom he is looking, with a single white rose. White roses, a symbol of the Virgin’s purity, also appear at the very top of the panel near the head of one of the two angels. The Child wears a coral necklace and bracelet, thought to ward off illness; one of the angels also wears coral.

Matteo carefully composed his panels with many heads and figures occupying a limited space in a carefully overlapping structure. Saint Sebastian and Saint Catherine of Siena flank the Madonna evenly, and the angels balance each other in the upper section of the panel. All available space is filled with detail—figures, floral symbols and attributes.

All six figures have golden embossed haloes that, in combination with the intricately textured red and gold brocade of the Virgin’s underrobe, create a rich and sumptuous vision. Her halo is inscribed with part of the Latin phrase ‘VIRGO DECVS C[O]ELI VIR[GO SANCTISSIMA]’ [Virgin, Ornament of Heaven, (most Holy) Virgin], the title of a Medieval Marian hymn. Despite the seriousness of the countenances of both saints and the Virgin, the inclusion of the two child-like angels with flowers in their hair who smile down on the viewer counters much of the solemnity.[3]

Saint Sebastian holds the palm of martyrdom in his right hand. [4] The three arrows that pierce his neck and torso refer to the first attempt to kill him which failed; he was later beaten to death for his Christian faith. In such paintings he is invoked against the threat of the plague, which first affected Siena in 1348. Saint Catherine of Siena, who died a hundred years before this work was created, is one of the patron saints of Italy. She has always been closely associated with her native Siena, following her canonisation in 1461. Like Saint Sebastian she was invoked against the threat of the plague. Matteo depicts her in the habit of a Dominican, the Order she entered at the age of sixteen. She holds her standard symbols, a book and a Madonna Lily. A large white lily in full bloom also occupies an empty gold area above the Madonna’s head. This flower’s petals symbolise the Virgin’s body, while its golden centre denotes her soul. Along with roses, lilies are said to have filled Mary’s tomb, which was empty when opened by the apostles.[5]

Simeran Maxwell

 [1] Erica Susanna Trimpi, ‘Matteo di Giovanni: Documents and a critical catalogue of his panel paintings’, unpublished PhD thesis, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 1987, vol. 1, p. 105.

[2] Siena remained under Byzantine artistic influence well into the fifteenth century, which resulted in an abundance of gold in Sienese painting. See Trimpi, p. 22.

[3] Matteo’s Virgins were often depicted smiling and happy.

[4] See also cat. 42, Raphael, Saint Sebastian c.1501–1502.

[5] The empty tomb: the Roman Catholic Church doctrine of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary teaches that at the end of her life Mary was taken up into heaven, both physically and spiritually.