Mourning Virgin and St John ('Dolenti')

The wooden group depicting the Dolenti (the Madonna and St John the Evangelist) was made by the Sienese Domenico di Niccolò dei Cori between September 1414 and the beginning of 1415. Thanks to meticulous documentary research, it is discovered that the two figures were intended to flank a fourteenth-century Crucifix in walnut, long venerated as shown by these documents, inside the Cathedral of Siena. The group, considered by important scholars to be the artist's masterpiece, after various events, is now in the Opera Museum.

The two figures, with their massive and monumental shapes, are furrowed with nerve and wrinkled folds, typical elements of early 15th century sculpture. Strongly expressive and almost pathetic are both the faces, which show sadness, pain and resignation, and the hands. The mouth and eyes of the two figures also contribute to making tangible this pain that the figures want to express.

According to a long established practice for wooden sculpture, while Domenico di Niccolò dei Cori took care of carving wood, the painter Martino di Bartolomeo painted the two figures. The group has been restored on more than one occasion: last time in 1987, when the patina of candle smoke that obscured the two pieces was removed.