A Popular Handbook to the National Gallery, Volume I, Foreign Schools / Including by Special Permission Notes Collected from the Works of John Ruskin

by Unknown

1140. CHRIST HEALING THE BLIND.

Duccio (Sienese: about 1260-1340). See 566.

The departure from conventional forms, which was characteristic of Duccio, is conspicuous in this picture. Each of the disciples has an individual character, the entire group representing not conventional forms but living types of men. There is a piece of symbolism in the blind man who has already been healed which should not escape notice. Duccio is not content to represent the bare act of healing, but insists further upon the efficacy of the touch of Him who was the Light of the World, by making the blind man drop the staff of which he has no longer need. There is another piece of symbolism in the gradated scale by which he draws attention to the respective dignities of his characters—Christ being the tallest in the picture, the blind man the shortest (A. H. Macmurdo in Century Guild Hobby Horse, 1886, p. 119).