Duccio di Buoninsegna ca. 1255 – 1319

Entry into Jerusalem (Maestà)

tempera on panel (100 × 57 cm) — 1308-11 Museum Museo dell'Opera del Duomo, Florence

Duccio di Buoninsegna biography

This work is linked to Matthew 21:8

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Jesus had told his disciples to go and fetch an ass and her foal from a nearby village. He needed the animals to fulfil Zechariah's prophecy: "thy King cometh unto thee: he is just, and having salvation; lowly, and riding upon an ass, and upon a colt the foal of an ass."

Seated on the she-ass and accompanied by his disciples Jesus enters Jerusalem. People greet him by spreading clothes before him and by waving palm branches.

This panel was on the lower left of the reverse side of Duccio's monumental altarpiece for the Siena cathedral, the Maestà. It is the starting point for the story of Jesus' final days that unfolds on the other panels.

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