Singing the Magnificat from Prague to Siena: Altarpieces for the Feast of the Visitation, 1386–1423

During the Great Western Schism, a new feast of the Visitation of the Virgin was introduced to the Church, or its Roman party, by the archbishop of Prague, Jan of Jenštejn, and many collaborators including the Dominican Raymond of Capua. This article focuses on the reception of the new feast in Siena, a city to which Raymond had many connections, through two retables: the first made for the Dominican church, the second for the cathedral. Using Bohemian sources concerning the Visitation allows for a reconsideration of the iconography of both altarpieces and their relationship to contemporary politics. In particular, the sources shed new light on the altarpiece for the cathedral, which centers on an image of the Madonna of Humility. I propose that this image functioned in part as a visualization of the Magnificat, Mary's canticle from the Visitation, a pre-existing association given greater strength and new political weight by the new feast. Its inclusion on a Visitation altar was fully incorporated into the cathedral's liturgical cycle, and thus into the center of Sienese public life. The impulse from Bohemia thus subtly changed the contours of Sienese Marian art in the quattrocento by associating the Madonna of Humility with new meanings and new functions.