The Maestà is a painting by the Italian artist Cimabue

Cimabue

Cimabue , also known as Bencivieni di Pepo or in modern Italian, Benvenuto di Giuseppe, was an Italian painter and creator of mosaics from Florence....

, painted around 1280 and housed in Musée du Louvre of Paris

Paris

Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

, France

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

.

History

It was acquired by the Louvre in 1813, as part of the Napoleonic spoiling of artworks in Italy, together with Giotto's Stigmata of St. Francis, also from San Francesco.

Description

The work is considered to be from around 1280, thus preceding the Santa Trinita Maestà

Santa Trinita Maestà

The Santa Trinita Maestà is a painting by the Italian medieval artist Cimabue, dating to c. 1280-1290. It is housed in the Uffizi Gallery of Florence, central Italy.-History:...

: the is painted using without a pseudo-perspective, and the angels who crowd around the Virgin are not spatially placed, but simply painted one above the other. The throne is similar to the Maestà painted by Cimabue in the Basilica of San Francesco di Assisi (1288–1292).

This work established a new canon for the Madonna with Child theme, which was subsequently used by other painters, such as Duccio di Buoninsegna in his Rucellai Maestà.