Master Of Badia A Isola

Italian painter. This anonymous artist, named after the Virgin and Child Enthroned with Two Angels in SS Salvatore e Cirino, Badia a Isola (near Monteriggioni, Siena), is a problematic figure. At the one extreme, the Badia a Isola panel and related works have been viewed as early works by Duccio di Buoninsegna; at the other, a much expanded corpus of works for the artist has been proposed. A number of critics agree in grouping a Virgin and Child (Siena, Pinacoteca Nazionale, 593), a polyptych that once contained a St Paul, a St John the Evangelist and a St Peter (South Hadley, MA, Mount Holyoke College Art Museum), a St John the Baptist (Cologne, Wallraf-Richartz-Museum, 608), a Virgin and Child (Utrecht, Catharijneconvent), a Redeemer and four Angels (untraced) and a Virgin and Child Enthroned with Four Angels (Venice, Collezione Vittorio Cini), but other attributions are widely debated. The painter of the Badia a Isola panel, a distinct and independent artistic personality, was conservative, blending elements from the tradition of Guido da Siena with the newer style of Duccio. His early work is markedly sculptural and spatially assertive; his later production is less so. The Badia a Isola panel is the most important of the Master's surviving works insofar as it seems to document stylistic features of Sienese art in the 1290s that are less visible elsewhere.

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