Madonna and Child

Barna da Siena was a fourteenth-century Sienese painter of disputed identity — some scholars identify him with the main master of the New Testament fresco cycle at the Collegiata di San Gimignano, while others treat him as a separate figure. This Madonna and Child at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York represents the Sienese devotional tradition in its most refined form: the Virgin as Queen of Heaven rendered with the linear grace and jewel-like color that Duccio established and Simone Martini perfected. The intimacy of the mother-child relationship, with the tender exchange of glances, shows the humanizing impulse that characterized Trecento Siena within the international Gothic context.

The Madonna is depicted in the Hodegetria type, the Christ Child looking out at the viewer while the Virgin directs his attention. Gold ground and gold highlights on drapery create the celestial luminosity of Sienese panel painting. The figures are rendered with the characteristic Sienese linear elegance — flowing contours, expressive hands, and the subtle incline of the Virgin's head.