Maestà di Figline

The Maestà di Figline attributed to the Master of the Fogg Pietà, dated around 1410, is a devotional panel from the circle of late Florentine Gothic painting, showing the Virgin Mary enthroned in majesty as Queen of Heaven — the type known as Maestà that Cimabue and Duccio had established as the supreme format for Marian devotion in Italian art. The anonymous master associated with the Fogg Museum Pietà represents the conservative Florentine tradition at the turn of the fifteenth century, when more progressive artists like Lorenzo Monaco and Gentile da Fabriano were introducing the International Gothic style. The Maestà format, with its gold-ground hieratic presentation, was deeply embedded in Tuscan devotional culture.

The panel employs a gold ground with figures in the late Florentine Gothic manner: warm flesh tones, decorative drapery folds, and a hieratic scale relationship between the Virgin and flanking saints. The Christ child is animated with the characteristic Florentine naturalistic touch. Haloes are elaborately incised.