Artwork story
About The Coronation of the Virgin
The artist and artwork
Niccolò di Buonaccorso painted The Coronation of the Virgin in Siena around 1380 using tempera on a wood panel with a gold ground. The Met calls this little-known artist one of the most accomplished Sienese painters of the later fourteenth century. His pictures are small and jewel-like. Here Christ reaches across to crown a bowed Mary as ranks of haloed angels gather around them and musicians fill the lower register.
The world around it
Together with Florence, Siena had been a major center of late-medieval Tuscany. Its prosperity was broken by the plague of 1348, which the Met says killed more than half the city's population. Niccolò worked a generation later, sustaining a Sienese tradition shaped by Duccio's storytelling, rich color, and union of sacred imagery with human feeling. This intimate panel may have belonged to a portable folding altarpiece, bringing public-looking splendor into a work that could be moved and opened.
A detail to notice
The panel has two companions: a Presentation of the Virgin in Florence's Uffizi and a Marriage of the Virgin in London's National Gallery. All three match in style, scale, framing, and the blue-and-red diamond lozenges painted over silver on their backs, evidence of a folding structure, although the Met cautions that their exact connection is unknown. The engaged frame participates in the image. Its cusped arch repeats the concentric curves of the angels' halos, drawing the eye inward from gilded wood to pointed blue wings, orange angels, gold haloes, and the quiet gesture of the crown. Below, a portative organ and bowed instrument turn the assembly into visible music. The frame's silvered and punched outer edges and patterned reverse rewarded looking even when the scene was closed.
Look closer: materials, scale, and subjects
The recorded object is painting made in Tempera on wood, gold ground and held in the Robert Lehman Collection department.
Recorded dimensions include Overall, with engaged frame, 20 x 12 7/8 in. (50.8 x 32.7 cm); painted surface 17 5/8 x 10 1/2 in. (44.8 x 26.7 cm).
Subject terms include Musical Instruments, Angels, Virgin Mary, and Saints. Treat them as guideposts, not a complete interpretation.
Collection history and public-domain source
The collection credit line is Robert Lehman Collection, 1975.
The individual artwork page and official image were verified as Public Domain on 2026-08-23.
No Context Gallery independently uses the public-domain image. The source museum has not endorsed, sponsored, or affiliated itself with these products.
Research sources
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