Art

London celebrates 14th-century Siena

The exhibition Siena: the Rise of Painting 1330-1350 runs until 22 June at the National Gallery

15 April 2025

3' min read

Siena in the first decades of the 14th century was the cradle of an artistic revolution that transformed European painting forever, giving it new life. The context favoured creativity and innovation: the city was rich, politically stable and well governed, a major banking, financial and commercial centre, frequented by many foreigners and pilgrims travelling along the Via Francigena from Canterbury to Rome.

The exhibition Siena: the rise of painting at the National Gallery in London celebrates this extraordinary flowering, transporting us to a microcosm that from the Tuscan hills influenced artists in Italy and across Europe. The story focuses on four key figures: Duccio di Buoninsegna, Simone Martini and the two brothers Pietro and Ambrogio Lorenzetti, who created images that fill the eyes and touch the heart.

I quattro grandi maestri della Siena trecentesca alla National Gallery
Photogallery18 foto

The first painting on display is a Madonna and Child by an anonymous 13th century Byzantine artist. Placed next to the same subject painted by Duccio around 1290, it emphasises the contrast between the traditional, hieratic and rigid image and the profoundly human figures of the Sienese artist: the Virgin looks at her child with a mixture of love and sorrow, aware of her destiny, while Jesus reaches out his little hand to touch her veil and face, with an instinctive, affectionate and playful gesture that any mother can recognise.

Both in small paintings and diptychs painted for private patrons and in large-scale works such as the famous Maestà, the altarpiece for Siena Cathedral, Duccio depicts real people and conveys human emotions. The Maestà, installed in Siena Cathedral in 1311 amidst great celebrations, was a monumental work, with a 5 x 5 metre central panel dedicated to Mary, the patron saint of the city, who, according to tradition, had intervened to save it from the siege of the enemy republic of Florence in 1260.

National Gallery

In 1771, the Maestà was dismantled and sawn into several portions. The predella was dismantled and the different scenes from the life of Christ sold separately. The exhibition at the National Gallery brings together for the first time since then all eight panels of the predella, reassembling the narrative Duccio intended.

This is not the only example of patient behind-the-scenes work that made it possible to recompose works separated in time for the first time. Two triptychs by Duccio, created together and with the same external decorations, are once again close together. The six panels of the Orsini polyptych by Simone Martini, with scenes of the Martyrdom of Christ on one side and the Annunciation on the other, now preserved between Paris, Antwerp and Berlin are reunited.

Martini was the undisputed heir of Duccio, admired and celebrated for his virtuosity far beyond the borders of the city, even invited to Avignon to the papal court, where he met Petrarch. His paintings tell a story with a thousand architectural and landscape details, outline bodies under clothes and show emotions on faces.

Ambrogio Lorenzetti, Pietro's younger brother, began his apprenticeship working on Duccio's Maestà and then flew further, creating works that, while using traditional themes, such as the Annunciation of 1344, are radically new in composition, use of space and the introduction of architectural elements. Gabriel's message and Mary's response fly from their lips, written on canvas.

Absolutely unique, then, is his Madonna del Latte, which shows a completely real, living, kicking baby looking at us as he clutches his mother's bare breast with his little hand to suck the milk. A few decades have passed, but we are light years away from the rigid Byzantine Madonna.

After so much splendour, the exhibition ends with a tragedy: the arrival of the bubonic plague, which killed half the population of Siena, including probably the two Lorenzetti brothers. It marked the beginning of the city's decline, accentuated later in the 16th century when the proud Siena was conquered and incorporated by Florence. For centuries, Sienese art was neglected, but this triumphant, unmissable exhibition puts it back where it was in the 14th century: at the centre of the world.

Siena: the Rise of Painting 1330-1350, until 22 June, National Gallery, London