Scripture · Mark 1:17
Isaiah 7:14
The Nativity with the Prophets Isaiah and Ezekiel
Therefore the Lord Himself will give you a sign: Behold, the virgin will be with child and give birth to a son, and will call Him Immanuel.
There are two babies, but only one birth. Duccio shows the infant in the manger and again in the bath, allowing care, worship and prophecy to share one golden space.
About the artwork
Mary’s reclining figure is much larger than the attendants washing the child below. Size announces importance here rather than distance. The bathing scene makes the infant’s body tangible, while the swaddled figure above receives the gaze of the animals. The eye can move between moments instead of choosing a single instant.
This panel formed part of the base of Duccio’s great Maestà for Siena Cathedral. Its prophets belong to that wider arrangement of promises and Gospel scenes. Isaiah’s scroll quotes the Immanuel prophecy; Ezekiel’s draws on the closed gate through which only the Lord enters, read by Christians as an image of Mary’s virginity. The words explain why these solemn figures stand beside an intimate scene of birth.
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What does Isaiah 7:14 mean?
Isaiah 7:14 originally addresses King Ahaz amid a political and military crisis. Matthew 1:22–23 later applies the Immanuel sign to Jesus. Duccio makes that Christian reading visible in the scroll beside Mary, while the bath insists that fulfilment has taken bodily form. The small washing basin and the commanding prophet belong to the same argument: the promised child has actually arrived.
Sources
National Gallery of Art collection record. National Gallery of Art collection record and inscriptions: the repeated infant, symbolic scale, Maestà predella and the prophets’ scrolls.
Isaiah 7 — Berean Standard Bible. The paired text read in its surrounding chapter.
National Gallery, London — Duccio predella iconography. Scholarly discussion of the adjoining prophets and the closed-gate text as a Marian reading.
Also from Isaiah:Still Life with BibleThe Nativity