Resumen de The Prince and the Bishop: A New Hypothesis for Tabernacle 35 in Siena's Pinacoteca Nazionale
Diana Norman
An essay on a painting, in the 13th- and 14th-century collections of the Pinacoteca Nazionale of Siena, Italy, that is generally assumed to be by a member of the workshop headed by the well-known Sienese painter Duccio. Often referred to as Tabernacle 35, this painting is particularly striking for the way in which its central subject of the Virgin and Christ-Child with saints is enlivened by the inclusion of a kneeling figure of a man with a crown, shown in the characteristic form of a donor figure or votary in the act of supplication. In fact, the painting is highly complex in terms of the multiple images that it contains. The author contends that it may well have been commissioned by the French prince Charles of Valois, and its highly distinctive program of religious imagery can be attributed to the prince's circumstances in 1301 and 1302 (he visited Siena in 1301 and his daughter was born there).
