Madonna Sedes Sapientiae

If there are works that can axiomatically sum up entire figurative civilisations, such are sculptures like Giovanni Pisano's Scrovegni Madonna, or this monumental Mother by Tino, who seems to have rediscovered in the ancestral Etruscan roots of the Sienese territory unknown modes of grandeur and grace. The rigour of the composition is impeccable (note the continuity between Mother and Child in the drapery, the pose, even the profiles); the same may be said of the velvety blossoming of the surfaces, sensuously sensitive, which soften the grandiose conception of the statue with tremulous feeling. This Madonna belongs to the sculptor's maturity and can almost certainly be identified with the one that crowned the monument of Bishop Orso.