Further Reading
Cattaneo, G., and E. Baccheschi. L’opera completa di Duccio.
Milan: Rizzoli, 1972.
Cole, Bruce. Sienese Painting from Its Origins to the Fifteenth
Century. New York: Harper and Row, 1980.
Deuchler, Florens. Duccio. Milan: Electa, 1983.
Jannella, Cecilia. Duccio. Florence: Scala, 1991.
La pittura in Italia: Il Duecento e il Trecento, 2 vols. Milan:
Electa, 1986.
Ragionieri, Giovanna. Duccio: Catalogo completo dei dipinti.
Florence: Cantini, 1989.
Santi, Bruno, et al. La Maestà di Duccio restaurata. Florence:
Centro Di, 1990.
Stubblebine, James H. “Duccio and His Collaborators in the
Cathedral Maestà.” Art Bulletin, 55, 1973, pp. 185–204.
——. Duccio di Buoninsegna and His School. Princeton, N.J.:
Princeton University Press, 1979.
White, John. “Measurement, Design, and Carpentry in Duccio’s
Maestà.” Art Bulletin, 55, 1973, pp. 334–366; 547–569.
——. Duccio: Tuscan Art and the Medieval Workshop. London:
Thames and Hudson, 1979.
Gustav Medicus
DUFAY, GUILLAUME
(Du Fay, Du Fayt; 1397–1474)
Composer, musician, and cleric. During a career that
spanned over fi fty years, Dufay produced some of the
fi nest music of the late Middle Ages. Contemporary
esteem for Dufay and his music was matched only by
the reputation of his contemporary Gilles Binchois.
Dufay’s life and peripatetic musical career have been
outlined to an extent matched by no other 15th-century
composer. There are hundreds of surviving documents
relating to his career, and gaps in the documentary
record are often fi lled by evidence from the occasional
works he composed. According to recent discoveries
by Planchart, Dufay was born near Brussels, the ille-
gitimate son of a priest, on August 5, 1397. The earli-
est documents regarding his musical career date from
1409, when he is listed as a puer altaris at Cambrai
cathedral. By 1414, he had risen to the rank of clericus
altaris and had been granted a chaplaincy at Cambrai.
His precise whereabouts are unknown over the next
few years, but it is likely that he was at the Council of
Constance, possibly in the entourage of Pierre d’Ailly,
bishop of Cambrai.
During the early 1420s, Dufay was in northern Italy.
Two of his earliest datable works were written for the
Malatesta family. He returned to France for a time, from
1423 or 1424 until 1426, probably with an eye toward se-
curing prebends in the area of Laon. His rondeau Adieu
ces bons vins de Lannoys (1426) bade fond farewell to
Laon, as he returned once more to Italy. Dufay was in
Bologna by early 1426, serving as secretary to Cardinal
Louis Aleman, under whom he was ordained in 1427
or 1428. From 1428 until 1433 or 1434, Dufay served
popes Martin V (d.1431) and Eugenius IV in the papal
chapel, where he was associated with some of the best
composers of the day, among them Arnold de Lantins
and Johannes Brassart. His output included occasional
motets in celebration of Eugenius IV.
Dufay traveled extensively over the next few years.
During 1434–35, he was in the employ of the court of
Savoy and made at least one extended visit to Cambrai.
At Savoy, Dufay met Gilles Binchois for the fi rst time; it
was probably this meeting that is documented in Martin
Le Franc’s Champion des dames. He returned to Italy in
1435, rejoining the entourage of Eugenius IV in Flor-
ence. Dufay composed the motet Nuper rosarum fl ores
in 1436 for the consecration of Florence cathedral by
Eugenius. By 1437, he had returned once again to the
court of Savoy, composing one of his last isorhythmic
motets, Magnanimae gentis (1438), in celebration of a
peace treaty between Louis, duke of Savoy, and Louis’s
brother, Philippe, count of Geneva.
By 1439, Dufay had settled once more in Cambrai,
although he was frequently absent throughout the rest
of his life, both on cathedral business and on a few
freelance excursions. Dufay’s activities at Cambrai
included a wide variety of musical and clerical duties:
supervising choirboys and petits vicaires and overseeing
the revision and editing of the cathedral’s choirbooks.
Throughout the 1440s, Dufay maintained an unoffi cial
though familiar relationship with Philip the Good, duke
of Burgundy, and some of Dufay’s liturgical music of
this period, including a sizable number of Mass Proper
settings, was composed for the Burgundian chape.
Louis, duke of Savoy, continued to woo the composer
as well, and during an extended absence from Cambrai,
in 1452–58, Dufay was employed by the Savoy court. It
was probably during this last Savoy sojourn that Dufay
composed most of his late songs. By 1458, Dufay had
returned to Cambrai and remained there for the rest of
his life, although he maintained contact with several
important patrons, including the dukes of Burgundy and
Savoy and, indirectly, with young Lorenzo de’ Medici
of Florence.
When Dufay died on November 27, 1474, he left
explicit instructions regarding the music to be sung at
his funeral, which was to include his large four-voice
setting of the Marian antiphon Ave regina celorum. His
will attests to a man of considerable means—books, fur-
nishings, property, and money garnered from a lifetime
of patronage and shrewd trading in canonical benefi ces.
There is evidence that both Johannes Ockeghem and
Antoine Busnoys composed déplorations on Dufay’s
death, although these works are now lost.
Dufay composed in virtually every polyphonic form
of the 15th century, and it has recently been discov-
ered that he composed plainchant as well. His works
show an impressive command of every compositionalDUCCIO DI BUONINSEGNA