ITP 51: Christ’s Entry into Jerusalem, by Duccio di Buoninsegna
On Palm Sunday this week’s picture is Christ’s Entry into Jerusalem, a panel from the great polyptych known as the Maesta, which was created by Duccio di Buoninsegna and his workshop in Siena between 1308 and 1311. Using colour, line and considerable ingenuity the painter has fleshed out the New Testament accounts such as Matthew, Chapter 21:
“And when they drew nigh unto Jerusalem, and were come to Bethphage, unto the Mount of Olives, then sent Jesus two disciples, Saying unto them, Go into the village over against you, and straightway ye shall find an ass tied, and a colt with her: loose them, and bring them unto me. And if any man say ought unto you, ye shall say, The Lord hath need of them; and straightway he will send them… And the disciples went, and did as Jesus commanded them, and brought the ass, and the colt… and they set him thereon. And a very great multitude spread their garments in the way; others cut down branches from the trees, and strawed them in the way. And the multitudes that went before, and that followed, cried, saying, Hosanna in the highest.”
Duccio rose to the challenge of recreating a crowd scene with a cast of thousands on a panel of wood no bigger than a school atlas. Accompanied by the huddled mass of his disciples, Jesus rides up a roughly cobbled incline towards a Jerusalem that has been reimagined as a fourteenth-century Tuscan hilltop city – a place which, with its fortified city gate, slender towers and polygonal gothic marble baptistry was probably intended to put the artist’s Sienese audience in mind of their own home town. While Christ raises his right hand in benediction, the forty or so citizens whom Duccio has arranged to stand in for the biblical multitudes welcome him with a display of awestruck and frenzied hospitality. Boys and young men are shinning up trees to cut down palms to strew in the path of the honoured visitor. The entrance to the city is packed with people, forcing others to climb the stone wall to the left of the gate just to get a view. Curiosity is more abundantly in evidence than the singing of hosannas: the painter depicts the scene as a kind of communal wondering out loud, expressed in the craning of necks, fascinated peering, mutters and whispers and rapidly exchanged looks.
At the vanguard of the welcome party, an obsequious greeter flings his fine cape down on to the packed earth and cobbles over which Christ is about to ride: the original red carpet. This gesture would have had particular force in fourteenth-century Siena, thriving centre of the early Renaissance textile industry, where cloth was money. Duccio’s original audience may have been reminded, by this detail, of Francis of Assisi’s pious renunciations of wealth. Francis, born into a family of rich cloth merchants, had outraged his father by throwing his finery into the street. His legend was still fresh in the memory, Francis having died less than a century before Duccio painted this picture.
Following the same thread of textile-related meanings, the artist has distinguished Christ from the average man in the street by picking out the border of His blue robe in a shimmering line of gold. More gold leaf has been used for His halo, which has been pricked out with exquisite patterns themselves reminiscent of fourteenth-century textile designs, using a technique known as punchwork. Such details serve not only to separate the Son of God from the mundane world but also to link him to the higher reality whence He came, and to which He will return. Duccio’s sky, which is not blue but similarly gilded, symbolises the vault of heaven.
The leafless tree visible just behind Christ’s halo is a specific reference to scripture. This is the fig tree which Christ was to notice when coming back to Jerusalem from Bethany on the day after the events depicted here. To quote Matthew once more:
“Now in the morning as he returned into the city, he hungered. And when he saw a fig tree in the way, he came to it, and found nothing thereon, but leaves only, and said unto it, Let no fruit grow on thee henceforward for ever. And presently the fig tree withered away. And when the disciples saw it, they marvelled, saying, How soon is the fig tree withered away! Jesus answered and said unto them, Verily I say unto you, if ye have faith, and doubt not, ye shall not only do this which is done to the fig tree, but also if ye shall say unto this mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea; it shall be done. And all things, whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer, believing, ye shall receive.”
Duccio has, I believe, added his own message to the faithful. Below the road along which Christ rides unkempt grass grows up against an ochre wall; and into that wall the painter has set a door, leaving it ajar like an invitation. I think this was his way of allowing the viewer into the sacred scene. It is a small detail, but a significant one, carrying as it does the suggestion that those who hold fast to their faith will also, one day, be permitted to enter the city of God.
Date: 08-04-2001
Owning Institution: Opera del Duomo, Siena
Publication:
Sunday Telegraph “In The Picture”
Subject:
Renaissance
On Palm Sunday this week’s picture is Christ’s Entry into Jerusalem, a panel from the great polyptych known as the Maesta, which was created by Duccio di Buoninsegna and his workshop in Siena between 1308 and 1311. Using colour, line and considerable ingenuity the painter has fleshed out the New Testament accounts such as Matthew, Chapter 21:“And when they drew nigh unto Jerusalem, and were come to Bethphage, unto the Mount of Olives, then sent Jesus two disciples, Saying unto them, Go into the village over against you, and straightway ye shall find an ass tied, and a colt with her: loose them, and bring them unto me. And if any man say ought unto you, ye shall say, The Lord hath need of them; and straightway he will send them… And the disciples went, and did as Jesus commanded them, and brought the ass, and the colt… and they set him thereon. And a very great multitude spread their garments in the way; others cut down branches from the trees, and strawed them in the way. And the multitudes that went before, and that followed, cried, saying, Hosanna in the highest.”
Duccio rose to the challenge of recreating a crowd scene with a cast of thousands on a panel of wood no bigger than a school atlas. Accompanied by the huddled mass of his disciples, Jesus rides up a roughly cobbled incline towards a Jerusalem that has been reimagined as a fourteenth-century Tuscan hilltop city – a place which, with its fortified city gate, slender towers and polygonal gothic marble baptistry was probably intended to put the artist’s Sienese audience in mind of their own home town. While Christ raises his right hand in benediction, the forty or so citizens whom Duccio has arranged to stand in for the biblical multitudes welcome him with a display of awestruck and frenzied hospitality. Boys and young men are shinning up trees to cut down palms to strew in the path of the honoured visitor. The entrance to the city is packed with people, forcing others to climb the stone wall to the left of the gate just to get a view. Curiosity is more abundantly in evidence than the singing of hosannas: the painter depicts the scene as a kind of communal wondering out loud, expressed in the craning of necks, fascinated peering, mutters and whispers and rapidly exchanged looks.
At the vanguard of the welcome party, an obsequious greeter flings his fine cape down on to the packed earth and cobbles over which Christ is about to ride: the original red carpet. This gesture would have had particular force in fourteenth-century Siena, thriving centre of the early Renaissance textile industry, where cloth was money. Duccio’s original audience may have been reminded, by this detail, of Francis of Assisi’s pious renunciations of wealth. Francis, born into a family of rich cloth merchants, had outraged his father by throwing his finery into the street. His legend was still fresh in the memory, Francis having died less than a century before Duccio painted this picture.
Following the same thread of textile-related meanings, the artist has distinguished Christ from the average man in the street by picking out the border of His blue robe in a shimmering line of gold. More gold leaf has been used for His halo, which has been pricked out with exquisite patterns themselves reminiscent of fourteenth-century textile designs, using a technique known as punchwork. Such details serve not only to separate the Son of God from the mundane world but also to link him to the higher reality whence He came, and to which He will return. Duccio’s sky, which is not blue but similarly gilded, symbolises the vault of heaven.
The leafless tree visible just behind Christ’s halo is a specific reference to scripture. This is the fig tree which Christ was to notice when coming back to Jerusalem from Bethany on the day after the events depicted here. To quote Matthew once more:
“Now in the morning as he returned into the city, he hungered. And when he saw a fig tree in the way, he came to it, and found nothing thereon, but leaves only, and said unto it, Let no fruit grow on thee henceforward for ever. And presently the fig tree withered away. And when the disciples saw it, they marvelled, saying, How soon is the fig tree withered away! Jesus answered and said unto them, Verily I say unto you, if ye have faith, and doubt not, ye shall not only do this which is done to the fig tree, but also if ye shall say unto this mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea; it shall be done. And all things, whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer, believing, ye shall receive.”
Duccio has, I believe, added his own message to the faithful. Below the road along which Christ rides unkempt grass grows up against an ochre wall; and into that wall the painter has set a door, leaving it ajar like an invitation. I think this was his way of allowing the viewer into the sacred scene. It is a small detail, but a significant one, carrying as it does the suggestion that those who hold fast to their faith will also, one day, be permitted to enter the city of God.
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