Siena: The Rise of Painting, 1300-1350

The National Gallery’s meticulously researched exhibition of medieval Sienese masterpieces is an amassing of wonders that’s worth its weight in gold

Duccio, Duccio Maestà - Panels, The Temptation of Christ on the Mountain, about 1308-11. Tempera on poplar, 43.2 x 46 cm. The Frick Collection, New York. Purchase 1927 (1927.1.35). © Copyright The Frick Collection / Photo: Michael Bodycomb.

National Gallery, London
8 March – 22 June 2025

by JOE LLOYD

All that glisters is not gold. But in the painting of early 14th-century Siena, the entire world seems saturated with the warm glow of aurum. Open the windows and the golden air will flow right in. In Simone Martini’s Palazzo Pubblico Altarpiece (c1326-30), the saints’ halos compete with the background for the loveliest shine. Sometimes, as with a Duccio triptych (1302-08), owned by King Charles, the gold even seeps out of the folds in garments and delineates textile patterns. The green-grey body of Christ stretched out on the cross, blood dribbling from his feet on to a molehill-sized Calvary, feels all the more human in this radiant world. Yet for all their metallic shine, and for all the brilliant pigments of the garments and structures painted on them, these masterworks do not feel brash or ostentatious. They retain a sanctified aura seldom matched since. Beholding them feels good for the health.

Duccio, Triptych with the Crucifixion and other scenes, about 1302-8. Tempera on panel, 44.9 x 31.4 cm (central panel); 44.8 x 16.9 cm (left-wing); 45 x 17.1 cm (right-wing); 13.9 x 34.9 cm (spandrel). The Royal Collection / HM King Charles III (RCIN 400095). Royal Collection Trust / © His Majesty King Charles III 2024.

The canonical story of Italian art has been told time and again. Since Vasari, Siena has been cast as a primitive tributary of the great Florentine river. The National Gallery’s magisterial new exhibition Siena: The Rise of Painting, 1300-1350 allows us to consider the Sienese school of the trecento as the central character in its own story. It primarily does this through an undeniable amassing of wonders. These are augmented by meticulous curation and wall text. A collaboration with the Metropolitan Museum of Art, it took more than a decade for this exhibition to come together, and it shows. There are some staggering reunifications, such as the eight surviving panels from the reverse predella of Duccio’s Maestà (1308-11), usually held in six different museums. This exhibition is the paradise at the end of a heroic quest.

Siena’s shining era came through a confluence of factors. Independent since 1125, it had a relatively stable elected government and was fortuitously located on routes to the English wool trade and the silk roads. It was also a financial power, home to the world’s oldest surviving bank. In 1260, the Sienese routed their long-time rivals Florence at the Battle of Montaperti, ushering in a period of peace and prosperity. It was in this high medieval gap that Siena flourished, before the arrival of the Black Death in 1348 brought things crashing to a halt. Two generations of great artists followed in its wake. Duccio di Buoninsegna (c1255-c1319) was the undisputed leader of the first. The National Gallery presents the second leader as a tussle between Simone Martini (c1284-1344) and the brothers Pietro (c1280-1348) and Ambrogio Lorenzetti (c1290-c1348), though there were several other masters.

Duccio Maestà - Panels, The Calling of the Apostles Peter and Andrew, 1308-11. Tempera and gold leaf on panel, 43.3 x 46.2 x 4.4 cm. National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC. Courtesy National Gallery of Art, Washington.

Some features remain throughout this period. The city believed the Virgin was its particular protector. She consequently became the central focus of its art, whether in majesty (Maestà) surrounded by saintly courtiers or receiving Gabriel’s message of annunciation. Siena’s other great specialism was the crucifixion, where the swooning Mary also played a strong supporting role. All these works are religious. Many were aids to devotion. Duccio’s Virgin and Child Enthroned with Angels (1290-95), now considered a masterpiece, was used by its owner in private prayer. The scale of these works is often small. They were portable, too. Martini’s Orsini Polyptych (c1326-1334) consists of four panels that can be folded like a concertina for travel, then reassembled to make an altar.

Pietro Lorenzetti (active 1306(?), died probably 1348), Pieve Polyptych, about 1320. Tempera on panel, 312 x 295 x 9 cm. Chiesa di Santa Maria della Pieve, Arezzo. © Gentile concessione dell’Ufficio Beni Culturali della Diocesi di Arezzo-Cortona-Sansepolcro / L.A.D. Photo: Angelo Latronico.

Sienese panels are generally small-scale. They acquired mass through the arrangement of multiple panels. Pietro Lorenzetti’s Pieve Polyptych (c1320) sees numerous panels arranged to form an almost architectural structure, like the facade of a gothic cathedral. It is impossible to overstate how much many of these paintings insist on their physicality. They are three-dimensional objects covered in paint, rather than the illusionistic painted surfaces of the Renaissance. In many cases, what appears to be a frame is the same wooden board as the painted image: the artists used the material characteristics of these boards. A combo platter of Virgin and Child with the Annunciation, Crucifixion and Scenes from the Last Judgement (c1270-80) by the Clarisse Master has numerous punches and incisions in the shapes of hearts, vines and stars.

Duccio, The Virgin and Child, about 1290-1300. Tempera on poplar, 27.9 x 21 cm. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Purchase, Rogers Fund, Walter and Leonore Annenberg and The Annenberg Foundation Gift, Lila Acheson Wallace Gift, Annette de la Renta Gift, Harris Brisbane Dick, Fletcher, Louis V. Bell, and Dodge Funds, Joseph Pulitzer Bequest, several members of The Chairman's Council Gifts, Elaine L. Rosenberg and Stephenson Family Foundation Gifts, 2003 Benefit Fund, and other gifts and funds from various donors, 2004 (2004.442). © The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

This early work is charming. But Duccio blows it away. His Virgin and Child (c1290-1300) replaces the dignified figures of Byzantine icons with clearer human actions and emotions. Mary looks down in adoration mingled with sadness over her son’s predestined fate. The baby Jesus pulls at his mother’s veil as his feet wiggle. Duccio later perfected this talent for translating divine events to human life with the Maestà, a vast double-sided altarpiece collecting 43 scenes, which has since been bisected and cut into pieces. The eight reunified back predella panels – one of which has been lost – show Christ’s life from his temptation in the temple to the raising of Lazarus. They have a strong sense of narrative, like a storyboard. Jesus calls the fisherman Peter and Andrew in one panel, and they remain part of the cast. Christ confronts the devil twice, first on the balcony of a dazzling architectural ensemble and then in the hills, towering over pink toy towns like a pair of duelling kaiju. Sometimes stories happen simultaneously, as in the Nativity panel from the Maestà’s front predella where the infant Christ appears both with Mary and being bathed by midwives.

Duccio’s successors each added their own stamp. Pietro Lorenzetti explored the three-dimensional qualities of painting. His Birth of the Virgin (1335-42) triptych breaks with precedent to place all scenes in the same elaborate interior. His brother Ambrogio made great strides in storytelling. He even tooled words into the picture surface – one Annunciation (1344) has Gabriel’s message and Mary’s response shoot from their mouths like speech bubbles. And Martini had an unsurpassed eye for detail and inner life. The five panels of the Palazzo Pubblico altarpiece feature perhaps the most characterful individuals in the entire exhibition. Saint Andrew’s hair is about to turn grey; Saint Ansanus holds the banner of Siena with resolute defiance. A late work shows Christ returning to his parents after debating in the Temple. It is perhaps unique in art history. Christ the naughty teen protests with his arms folded, while Joseph scolds and Mary tries to defuse the situation.

Lando di Pietro, Head of Christ (fragment of crucifix), 1338. Tempera on walnut, 31 × 22 × 18 cm. Basilica di San Bernardino all'Osservanza, Siena. Museo Castelli © Foto Studio Lensini Siena.

It can be hard to turn away from these golden treasures. But the exhibition’s curators have taken care to situate the painted treasures among the other cultural products of their time. There is a reliquary topped by a gothic fantasia and an incense boat engraved and chased with a scene of Annunciation. There is a head of a wooden painted Christ (1338) made by the goldsmith and architect Lando di Pietro as part of a crucifix. It was blasted by allied bombs in the second world war, revealing Lando’s handwritten prayers inside. And there are the statues by Tino de Camaino and Gano di Fazio, which convincingly show the links between the evolution of painting and sculpture. Equally convincingly, one section spotlights the impact of the textile trade on Sienese painting.

The exhibition brings in antecedents and parallels from outside Siena, including exquisite carved ivories and illuminated books from France. The National Gallery even makes the case for Sienese influence on its own Wilton Diptych (c1395–1399), which seems at home among the luminous Martinis. About the only absence is Siena’s nemesis, Florence, where Duccio’s contemporary Giotto was developing his own mode, one which favoured anatomical realism and perspective over Siena’s abundant colours and simultaneous narratives. Giotto’s work points towards the artistic explosion that would follow. But after browsing these low-lit chambers of empyrean splendour, Florentine art seems all too terrestrial.