Madonna and Child and the Saints Catherine of Alexandria and John the Baptist

Trained as an artist in the great building site of Siena Cathedral, Tino di Camaino fell under the spell of the dramatic, expressive sculpture of Giovanni Pisano, who directed the work on the cathedral from 1284 to 1297. Tino’s study of Giovanni’s work and his contact with Simone Martini’s flowing, elegant rhythms led him to work out a highly original language in which he attempted to translate into sculpture the chromatic effects and refined forms of the painting being produced in Siena at the same time.

The structure of this relief and the arrangement of the figures clearly derive from triptychs made by the great painters of the early fourteenth century in Siena. Distinctive of Tino’s style is the full, expansive volume of the figures, molded into smooth, polished forms that highlight his attentive, refined sense of detail. The vigorous plasticism of the faces, accentuated by the powerfully developed, strong line of their jaws, is accompanied by a pictorial treatment of the beard of Saint John the Baptist and the hair of all the figures, whose elegantly elongated eyes recall the refined prototypes of Simone Martini. The close stylistic similarity to works made by Tino during his stay in Naples (around 1324 to 1337) suggest for our relief a date around the end of the 1320s, when he was executing some of his most important commissions for the House of Anjou, such as the tombs of Princess Catherine of Austria (Naples, San Lorenzo Maggiore) and Mary of Hungary (Naples, Santa Maria Donnaregina), who both died in 1323.