Description
The Ognissanti Maestà is one of Giotto's major panel paintings and a decisive work in the transformation of the Marian image in early fourteenth-century Florence. The Virgin sits frontally on a monumental throne and holds the Child on her knees. Christ blesses with his right hand and holds a scroll in his left, while angels and saints fill the space on either side.
The composition retains traditional features of the Maestà type, including the gold ground, frontality and strict hierarchy of scale. Giotto nevertheless transforms the formula through Mary's bodily monumentality and the spatial construction of the throne. The Virgin no longer appears as a flat silhouette before gold but as a large physical body occupying a real architectural seat.
