Glory and Grace: Siena’s 14th-Century Masters Shine in London
(REVIEW) With glittering treasures from Siena’s golden age at every turn, this outstanding exhibition at The National Gallery in London is the first outside of continental Europe to consider the major role that the Italian city played in the development of Western European art in the early decades of the 14th century.
Showcasing the extent to which a handful of remarkable Sienese artists pushed at the boundaries of what painting could be, “Siena: The Rise of Painting, 1300-1350” celebrates the dazzling and transformative art that emerged from the small Tuscan city some 700 years ago.
Increasingly experimental and sophisticated in their methods, the painters Duccio di Buoninsegna, Simone Martini and brothers Pietro and Ambrogio Lorenzetti paved the way for the great art of the Renaissance. Indeed, much of what we associate with artists such as Fra Angelico, Sandro Botticelli and Leonardo da Vinci can already be seen in the stunning masterpieces on display here.
In the early 14th century, Siena was a bustling urban center made rich by banking and commerce. The city owed its prosperity to its location on the Via Francigena, the major pilgrimage route connecting northern Europe to Rome, which passed through its heart. It was also a part of important trade networks, including the Silk Road linking East Asia, Africa and Europe.
Siena was united in its devotion to the Virgin Mary, who was believed to be the city’s personal defender and celestial queen. She was said to have intervened to save Siena at the Battle of Montaperti in 1260, and as a result, great public buildings were erected in her honor, including the city’s towering cathedral and the Palazzo Pubblico (town hall). Much art was commissioned from Siena’s leading artists for these and other sites, many examples of which have been gathered for this exhibition.
In the first room, we encounter Duccio’s small half-length Virgin and Child known as the “Stoclet Madonna.” This revolutionary image overthrew the rigid conventions of Byzantine icon painting, portraying Mary and Jesus tenderly interacting: Christ pulls on his mother’s veil while she lovingly gazes at him with a melancholy expression, indicating her foreknowledge of the Crucifixion.
In depicting his figures with warm human gestures and expressions, Duccio ushered in a new way of painting. No wonder the American art historian Bernard Berenson once described him as “the flower from whose seed all Sienese art sprang.”
Duccio produced many devotional paintings, including portable triptychs, some of which are on display here. His most important commission, however, was his breathtaking “Maestà” (1308-11), a massive double-sided altarpiece installed in Siena Cathedral in 1311. Its vast cycle of narrative panels demonstrated his advancements in the skill of storytelling through paint. Broken up and sold off in the 18th century, the eight surviving panels from the reverse predella (the base) are usually held in six different museums but are reunited here for the first time in some 250 years.
Appearing like a storyboard, each presents a scene from the life of Christ; from the wedding at Cana, to the Transfiguration, to the raising of Lazarus from the dead. The exquisite paintings are notable for their dramatic compositions and range of convincing locations, including architectural settings, domestic interiors, rocky wildernesses and shoreside views.
Duccio’s “Maestà” was most likely created with the help of assistants. Indeed, his workshop functioned like an academy for up-and-coming artists, and it’s possible that Simone Martini, Pietro and possibly Ambrogio Lorenzetti were among those who learned directly from the great master. Certainly, these painters, whose works fill the rest of the exhibition, were as fundamental to the evolution of Western painting as Duccio.
After Duccio’s death in 1319, Simone became Siena’s leading painter, introducing numerous innovations and refined techniques to the medium, including the subtle portrayal of emotion, advanced manipulation of gilded surfaces and accomplished renderings of textiles.
Although many of Simone’s works are now lost, one remarkable survival is a group of five panels from an altarpiece commissioned for the Palazzo Pubblico, which are reunited here for the first time. The Virgin and Child are flanked by saints Andrew, Peter, Luke and Ansanus (Siena’s patron saint), each of whom is painted with meticulous detail and a strong sense of individual character. Indeed, St. Luke, with his book and pen, may be a self-portrait.
Simone’s standout work is “Christ Discovered in the Temple,” an unusually large independent panel depicting the moment the young Jesus is reunited with his parents after slipping away to debate with the Jewish religious teachers.
The unconventional composition is rare in its arrestingly direct portrayal of a tense family moment: Jesus is cast as a sulking adolescent, standing with his arms folded as his father scolds him. Mary sits before him with an expression of consternation, the Latin book in her lap open to a page that translates as, “Son, why have you dealt with us like this?”
Simone painted this picture in Avignon, France, where he was working for the papal court, which was in exile from Rome. His departure from Siena allowed the Lorenzettis to take center stage. The brothers worked largely independently, creating artworks for the mendicant orders and other religious foundations beyond Sienna.
A room in the exhibition pairs Pietro’s paintings with the sculptures of Tino di Camaino, another itinerant Sienese artist who undertook significant commissions in Pisa, Florence and Naples and is best known for his innovative funerary monuments. The two artists almost certainly knew each other and clearly learned from one another’s works.
Pietro’s compelling art reflects his profound interest in sculpture. Take, for example, his cut-out crucifix, created around 1315-20. The three-dimensional standing image hovers between painting and sculpture, defying the traditional panel format. Pietro used strong modelling to define Christ’s body, which appears highly sculptural.
The solidity of the artist’s holy figures is also seen in the monumental “Pieve Polyptych” (1320), painted for the Bishop of Arezzo, which, alongside saints and prophets, is dominated by images of the Virgin.
Pietro’s younger brother Ambrogio elevated painting to an intellectual pursuit. However, many of his accomplishments were executed in the medium of fresco and therefore cannot be included in the exhibition. Among his painted panels is the powerful “Madonna Del Latte” (c. 1325), an unusually large picture depicting Mary nursing her kicking baby, who turns his head to gaze at us as he feeds. Mary’s golden halo includes the angel Gabriel’s words at the Annunciation in its tooled decoration — an innovation that became a hallmark of Ambrogio’s work.
Nearby are the artist’s beguiling “Saint Nicholas” panels, where setting and architecture are deployed to great effect. These pictures show the legendary saint sharing his personal wealth with neighbors who have fallen on hard times, and receiving his crosier and mitre as he is consecrated Bishop of Myra.
The dramatically spot-lit works of these pivotal artists is juxtaposed with a room filled with splendid examples of Sienese craftsmanship: chalices, crucifixes, reliquaries, choir books, textiles and other objects that were used in formal worship. Sienese goldsmiths in particular were renowned for their superlative skills, and this display gives a sense of the type of objects that would have surrounded the exhibition’s painters and their works.
A collaboration with the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, this once-in-a-lifetime exhibition has taken more than a decade to come to fruition. And no surprise, considering the stunning array of wonders its curators have assembled.
Siena is presented here as a creative powerhouse that changed the face of painting in Western Europe. But by the late 1340s, half of the city’s population had succumbed to the Black Death, which ravaged the continent in the late 1340s. Nevertheless, this did not dampen the inestimable impact that its artists had on the direction of European art in the succeeding centuries.
“Siena: The Rise of Painting, 1300-1350” is on view at The National Gallery, London, until June 22. Visit The National Gallery website for more information.
David Trigg is a writer and art historian based in the U.K. He is the author of “Money in Art” (HENI). You can find him on Instagram @davidtriggwriter.