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ONWARD AND UPWARD WITH THE ARTS
THE MISSING MADONNA
The story behind the Met’s most expensive acquisition.
by Calvin Tomkins
JULY 11, 2005


Museums - Metropolitan Museum of Art; Art, Artists; Painitngs; di Buoninsegna, Duccio; “Madonna and Child”; Stoclet, Adolphe; Christie'
he Metropolitan Museum of Art’s recent purchase of an early Renaissance “Madonna and Child” by Duccio di Buoninsegna, for a price said to have been between forty-five and fifty million dollars, has been greeted by most New Yorkers with unruffled calm. Although the acquisition was covered extensively last November, with emphasis on the price and the extreme rarity of works by this Sienese master, the little picture (it measures eleven inches high by just over eight inches wide, and is painted in tempera and gold on a wooden panel) has not attracted the multitudes that would make it difficult to see.