Segna di Buonaventura: Sienese Painter

Segna di Buonaventura - Saint John the Evangelist - ca. 1320 - Tempera on wood, gold ground - painted surface painted surface 27 1/4 x 16 1/2 in. (69.2 x 41.9 cm) - Metropolitan Museum of Art, New YorkSegna di Buonaventura (1280-1331) was an Italian painter of the Sienese School. He was active from about 1298 to 1331. Very little is known about his life.
The work featured here is described as follows: “This is the best-preserved panel of a signed altarpiece by Segna of which three other panels are also in the Metropolitan Museum. Although Segna’s art is dependent on the work of Duccio, his figures have a regal, hieratic formality. His ascetic, harshly featured saints consciously evoke a more archaic art, and he notably retained the Byzantine use of gold striations on draperies—emblematic of the sacred world of icons.” (Metropolitan Museum of Art”)
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