Trecento in the context of "Proto-Renaissance"

The Maestà, or Maestà of Duccio, is an altarpiece composed of many separate paintings commissioned from Duccio di Buoninsegna by the city of Siena in Tuscany in 1308 and is his major work. Duccio's Maestà was the first altarpiece to have both a front and back side. The front panels make up a large enthroned Madonna and Child with saints and angels, and a predella of the Childhood of Christ with prophets.

The reverse showed, in forty-three small panels, scenes from the Life of the Virgin and the Life of Christ, and were topped by and additional six panels showing angels. Several panels are now dispersed or lost. The base of the panel has an inscription that reads (in translation): "Holy Mother of God, be thou the cause of peace for Siena and life to Duccio because he painted thee thus." Though it took a generation for its effect to be truly felt, Duccio's Maestà set Italian painting on a course leading away from the hieratic representations of the Italo-Byzantine style and towards more direct presentations of reality, as developed by leading figures such as Giotto—believed to have been Duccio's pupil—during the Trecento.

Duccio di Buoninsegna (UK: /ˈduːtʃioʊ/ DOO-chee-oh, Italian: [ˈduttʃo di ˌbwɔninˈseɲɲa]; c. 1255/1260 – c. 1318/1319), commonly known as just Duccio, was an Italian painter active in Siena, Tuscany, in the late 13th and early 14th century. He was hired throughout his life to complete many important works in government and religious buildings around Italy. Duccio is considered one of the greatest Italian painters of the Middle Ages, and is credited with creating the painting styles of Trecento Gothic style and the Sienese school.

The Trecento was a period of vigorous activity in Italy in the arts, including painting, architecture, literature, and music. The music of the Trecento paralleled the achievements in the other arts in many ways, for example, in pioneering new forms of expression, especially in secular song in the vernacular language, Italian. In these regards, the music of the Trecento may seem more to be a Renaissance phenomenon; however, the predominant musical language was more closely related to that of the late Middle Ages, and musicologists generally classify the Trecento as the end of the medieval era. Trecento means "three hundred" in Italian but is usually used to refer to the 1300s. However, the greatest flowering of music in the Trecento happened late in the century, and the period is usually extended to include music up to around 1420.

Duecento (UK: /ˌdjuːəˈtʃɛntoʊ/ DEW-ə-CHEN-toh, Italian: [ˌdu.eˈtʃɛnto]; lit. 'two hundred', short for '1200'), or Dugento, is the Italian word for the Italian culture of the 13th century—that is to say 1200 to 1299. It was during this period that the first shoots of the Italian Renaissance appeared in art and literature, to be further developed in the following trecento period.

This period grew out of the Renaissance of the 12th century and movements originating elsewhere, such as the Gothic architecture of France. Most of the innovation in both the visual arts and literature was concentrated in the second half of the century, after about 1250, when major new directions opened up in both painting and sculpture, mostly in northern Italy, and the Dolce Stil Novo (Sweet New Style) emerged in poetry.

The Galleria dell'Accademia di Firenze (English: Gallery of the Academy of Florencecode: eng promoted to code: en ) is an art museum in Florence, Italy. It is best known as the home of Michelangelo's sculpture David. It also has other sculptures by Michelangelo and a large collection of paintings by Florentine artists, mostly from the period 1300–1600 (the Trecento to the Late Renaissance). It is smaller and more specialised than the Uffizi, the main art museum in Florence. It adjoins the Accademia di Belle Arti or academy of fine arts of Florence, but despite the name has no other connection with it.

In 2016, it had 1.46 million visitors, making it the second-most-visited art museum in Italy, after the Uffizi (2.02 million).

The Squarcialupi Codex (Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, MS Mediceo Palatino 87) is an illuminated manuscript compiled in Florence in the early fifteenth century. It is named for the noted fifteenth-century organist Antonio Squarcialupi, who owned it.

It is the single largest primary source of secular polyphonic music of the Trecento – the Italian ars nova – and contains the largest surviving collection of the compositions of Francesco Landini. The illuminated portraits of the musicians are attributed to Lorenzo Monaco and his circle. It is not known by whom, for what purpose, nor under whose patronage the compilation was made.

A portative organ (from the Latin verb portare, "to carry"), also known during Italian Trecento as the organetto, is a small pipe organ that consists of one rank of flue pipes, sometimes arranged in two rows, to be played while strapped to the performer at a right angle. The performer manipulates the bellows with one hand and fingers the keys with the other. The portative organ lacks a reservoir to retain a supply of wind and so it produces sound only while the bellows are being operated. The instrument was commonly used in European secular music from the 12th to the 16th centuries.

The Italian composer Francesco Landini is known to have played the instrument. There are performers on the instrument again as a result of the Early Music Revival. Some contemporary music has been written for it, for example by José María Sánchez-Verdú. Dolly Collins also used it in modern English folk music.