“Maestà tradita” by Gaetano Pesce
Piazza Santa Maria Novella
Florence, January 2017
“Thought for the public area in connection with its historical, artistic and religious context, Pesce’s new sculpture will be displayed in Piazza Santa Maria Novella close to the extraordinary facade of the basilica designed by Leon Battista Alberti on a previous installation. His monumental sculpture represents a woman wrapped up in a long cloak: she is a sort of Mater Matuta (like the one at the Florence Archeological Museum), and also an archetype inspired by the Christian Maestà. Therefore, the sculpture is the contemporary echo of the very famous Madonna Rucellai – which was commissioned to Duccio di Boninsegna in 1285 by the Laudesi confraternity for their chapel in Santa Maria Novella church. At the end of the sixteenth century, it was moved to the Rucellai chapel of the Dominican church, while in the XX century, it arrived at the Uffizi Museum. The Maestà Tradita is seated on a throne that is on an high pedestal itself. However, her figure of queen and mother clearly shows signs of pain. Her cloak is also her body, her uncovered body and her nude skin. It is a grazed, scourged body and an uncovered skin exposed and marked by verbal and physical abuse and violence. A big and heavy rusted metal sphere is tied to the right foot of the woman, with a strong chain as a symbol of the slavery that thousands of women are still suffering in many countries of the world.” (Gaetano Pesce, Maestà Tradita, Museo Novecento)
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