Diptych triptych form, with two outer panels that could be closed across the main central representation. They are one type of the multi-panel forms of painting known as "polyptychs". The diptych was a common format in Early Netherlandish painting and depicted subjects ranging from secular portraiture to religious personages and stories. Often a portrait and a Madonna and Child had a leaf each. It was especially popular in the 15th and 16th centuries. Painters such as Jan van Eyck, Rogier van der Weyden, Hans Memling and Hugo van der Goes used the form. Some modern artists have used the term in
Maestà The most famous example of the "Maestà" is the "Maestà with Twenty Angels and Nineteen Saints", an altarpiece comprising many individual paintings commissioned by the city of Siena in 1308 from the artist Duccio di Buoninsegna. The painting was installed in the city's cathedral on June 9, 1311. Although it took a generation for its effect truly to be felt, Duccio's "Maestà" set Italian painting on a course leading away from the hieratic representations of Byzantine art towards more direct presentations of reality. Creating this altarpiece assembled from many wood panels bonded together before painting was an arduous undertaking. The