Fig. 38. Duccio. Entry into Jerusalem; Christ Washing the Apostles’ Feet; Last Supper. From the back of the great Madonna.—Opera del Duomo, Siena.
If the front of this panel shows only moderate innovations, the case is not so for the back. The two score stories from the Bible or early Christian legend, in the distribution of the figures follow faithfully the standard Italo-Byzantine compositions. Where Duccio steps in is in bettering the forms, giving grace to the draperies, and animation to the gestures—above all in providing contemporary architectural accessories, and coping with the problem of space. He also carries to their ultimate refinement certain decorative formulas which the Byzantine painters had glimpsed but not fully realized. Thus two quite opposed tendencies pass into Sienese painting from Duccio;—a rather small preoccupation with accessories and the problem of space, and a pure æstheticism concerned with finesses of decorative arrangement—in short, the prose and the poetry of Sienese painting.
Sienese narrative painting tends to be scrupulous about details and inscenation, quite as a good story-teller naturally provides incidents that make for plausibility. We may see how Duccio’s mind works in the familiar theme of Christ entering Jerusalem, Figure [38]. Duccio sets the spectator in a garden with an open gate, thus throwing the scene back a little. Above the procession and the rejoicing throng rises a city wall, and still higher against the sky bristle Gothic towers and spires. Thus the theme gains picturesqueness and variety. One forgets that there is hardly space for the welcoming throng before the gate, and that the donkey’s four feet are on a level although he is going up hill. These little maladjustments show that while Duccio took infinite pains in inventing the setting, he borrowed the figure groups bodily from earlier Byzantine compositions in which the setting was simpler. In this piecing-together process he turns some pretty sharp corners, but he never sacrifices clarity and expressiveness.
In the scene where the maid servant catches the Galilean burr in Peter’s voice, Figure [39], and asks if he be not a follower of Jesus, we find Duccio’s method quite at its best. Nothing could be better than the sudden turn of the girl with one foot on the steps. Fine, too, is the concentration of the crowd on the exciting problem of gossip. Well-observed, their actions as they warm their feet and hands at the fire. Vivid, too, the impulsive gesture of Peter as he denies the charge. The place, a court yard with a staircase leading right into the picture above, which represents the court room where Jesus is being questioned, is most elaborately planned. One looks back through a portal into farther spaces. All this was so new and interesting that I presume the Sienese have never noticed to this day that the seated group would never fit in the space assigned to it and that the positions of the figures are ambiguous. The picture does admirably its work of telling a story spiritedly, and that is enough.
Fig. 39. Duccio. Peter denies Christ.—Opera del Duomo, Siena.
Duccio’s Calvary, Figure [41], is remarkable for breadth, spectacular effectiveness, and a measured pathos. As usual he multiplies actors and incidents while keeping the orderliness of the arrangement. The slightness of all the forms, their little weight and uncertain balance are apparent. And there is, on the same principle of taste, a similar attenuation of emotion. Where Giotto at Padua gave stark tragedy, Duccio offers a gentle flutter of restrained grief.
Fig. 40. Duccio. The Marys at the Tomb.—Opera del Duomo.