Virgin and Child Enthroned with Saints Peter, Paul, John the Baptist, and Dominic and a Dominican Supplicant

Ugolino di Nerio · c. 1330

Medium

Tempera on panel

Original size

37.2 × 23.2 cm (14 5/8 × 9 1/8 in.); Framed: 43.4 × 29.1 cm (17 1/8 × 11 7/16 in.)

Currently held

Art Institute of Chicago

Movement

Medieval

One of the finest surviving examples of Sienese Gothic devotional painting, this altarpiece arranges its gilded figures with the solemn, hieratic grace that defined Italian sacred art before the Renaissance took hold. Ugolino di Nerio was a close follower of Duccio di Buoninsegna, the towering figure who shaped the Sienese school, and his work carries that lineage clearly: the elongated forms, the tender modelling of faces, the intricate gold leaf that transforms flat panel into something closer to vision than painting. Ugolino worked primarily in tempera — egg-based pigment applied in careful, translucent layers — a technique demanding patience and precision that gives his figures their luminous, almost jewelled quality. The inclusion of a kneeling Dominican supplicant places this work firmly within the devotional culture of medieval monasticism, painted not for public display but to focus private prayer. The Art Institute of Chicago acquired the panel as part of a polyptych that was dismembered and dispersed across several collections, a fate common to large medieval altarpieces after the taste for such works declined. Our hand-painted oil reproduction honours the original's layered depth and gilded warmth, rendering each saint with the same measured reverence Ugolino brought to the panel nearly seven centuries ago.