Melun Diptych Melun Diptych The Melun Diptych is a two-panel oil painting by the French court painter Jean Fouquet (1425–1480) created around 1452. The name of the diptych came from its original home in the Collegiate Church of Notre-Dame in Melun. The left panel depicts Etienne Chevalier with his patron saint St. Stephen and the right panel depicts the Virgin and Christ child surrounded by cherubim. Each wooden panel measures about 93 by 85 centimeters and the two would have been hinged together at the center. The two pieces, originally a diptych, are now separated. The left panel now resides in the
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