This fall, The Metropolitan Museum of Art presents the first major exhibition in the United States focusing on early Sienese painting. Siena: The Rise of Painting, 1300–1350 will examine an exceptional moment at the dawn of the Italian Renaissance and the pivotal role of Sienese artists, including Duccio, Pietro and Ambrogio Lorenzetti, and Simone Martini, in defining western painting.
“Siena was an epicenter of artistic innovation and ambition in the 14th and 15th century. Its impact on the development of European art and on the development of painting cannot be emphasized enough,” said Max Hollein, The Met’s Marina Kellen French director and chief executive officer. “This monumental exhibition will bring together the most important group of early Sienese paintings ever assembled outside of Siena, offering a once-in-a-lifetime chance to explore the influence of this extraordinary artistic center.”
Drawing on the outstanding collections of The Met and the National Gallery, London, and including rare loans from dozens of other international lenders, the exhibition includes Duccio’s Stoclet Madonna, Ambrogio Lorenzetti’s Annunciation and historic reunifications of major pictorial ensembles, such as the back predella of Duccio’s Maestà and Simone Martini’s Orsini Polyptych. Although none of these painters survived the plague of about 1350, their achievements had an immeasurable impact on painters and theorists in the centuries that followed.
The exhibition is presented in 12 sections that broadly explore themes of geography and travel, artists and artistic personalities, and the reframing of painting to establish Siena as a major hub of artistic, economic, political, and religious activity before the Renaissance. It reunites elements of whole works that have been separated for centuries, resurrecting complete artistic visions that have been fragmented for the duration of the modern era. In bringing together these and other extant works that attest to a singular, fleeting moment in the history of European art, the exhibition illuminates the story of a thriving cultural center at the forefront of artistic innovation and achievement before most of its citizens, artists included, perished in the plague at mid-century.
The Met’s own Stoclet Madonna, one of the rare independent works by Duccio in America, is placed at the start of the exhibition, introducing the presentation to visitors and inviting them to explore key themes. In the first half of the 1300s, Sienese artists, especially painters, transformed the city, pushing their art to its limits to create large decorative schemes for its civic and religious buildings, while at the same time producing refined small-scale paintings that were collected and celebrated far outside the city walls. Despite the profusion of artistic output, this extraordinary chapter in the history of European art is known from only a small number of surviving works connected by a complex network of confluences. Notable among these remaining works, the Stoclet Madonna embodies the artist’s ability to synthesize different traditions and recast them in a new way within the frame of a painting. As Siena’s premier painter, Duccio received commissions for numerous devotional objects in both private and civic contexts.
Chief among Duccio’s commissioned works is the high altar of Siena’s cathedral, a large-scale image of the Virgin Mary enthroned known as the Maestà. This enormous double-sided painting, nearly 16 by 15 feet, was an ambitious undertaking that took five years to complete. The Maestà remained on the altar until 1506, when it was partially dismantled and later dismembered. Over the centuries, some fragments were lost while others were sold. This exhibition is the first time in centuries that the elements of the back predella are being seen together.
Another section explores the impact of Siena’s position as a major stop on the Via Francigena, a historic route that stretched from Naples and Rome to Paris and Canterbury in northern Europe. This highly traveled route generated an international traffic of people, ideas and objects, including ivories, enamels and textiles, through Siena, while also facilitating the dissemination of works by Sienese artists.
Duccio di Buoninsegna, Temptation of Christ
Duccio di Buoninsegna, The Annunciation
Duccio di Buoninsegna, Healing of the man born blind
Multipaneled paintings known as polyptychs were the most common form of altarpiece in the decades after Duccio completed the Maestà. Composed of independent panels, they could be painted in pieces and later assembled. One of Pietro Lorenzetti’s great altarpieces, his monumental Pieve Altarpiece, commissioned in 1320 for a church in Arezzo, has never before traveled from the setting for which it was painted, making this its first time in an exhibition. (As a side note, the altarpiece was restored by Tuscany-based, women-led RICERCA Restauro between 2016 and 2020.)
Siena’s connections with Mediterranean trade networks made it a key market for the circulation of luxury items produced by highly skilled weavers in Iran and northern China. These extraordinary cloths, woven with vibrantly colored threads and gold, were admired by Sienese artists, who, seeking to emulate their shimmering surfaces, carefully worked their motifs into their paintings.
Sienese painters were renowned for making some of the most refined and extraordinary works for private devotion. Highly prized by their patrons, they could be easily transported and are often recorded in inventories far from Siena. One exhibition section highlights the work of Simone Martini, Ambrogio Lorenzetti, and Pietro Lorenzetti, showcasing their different narrative and pictorial strategies. A major group of works are the reunited elements of Simone Martini’s masterpiece, the so-called Orsini Polyptych. One of the most sumptuous portable devotional images of early Italian painting, this complex work greatly influenced painters in Northern Europe.
The exhibition also examines the work of Pietro and Ambrogio Lorenzetti through their interest in narrative. The Lorenzetti brothers worked on projects both separately and together. Each contributed to a landmark series of altarpieces with scenes from the life of the Virgin that were painted as part of a larger program for Siena’s cathedral. These collective works placed narrative subjects at the center of the altarpiece, reframing the possibilities offered by the picture field. The exhibition includes both monumental works and detailed, smaller-scale narrative scenes.
Another section juxtaposes sculpture and painting to highlight the rivalry and mutual exchange between artists working in these two genres. The models presented by Siena’s great sculptors at the beginning of the 14th century prompted painters to explore greater dimensionality and weight in their compositions. Decades later, Tino di Camaino, perhaps the most significant and innovative sculptor of his generation, responded to painters, adapting their visual forms and strategies to engage viewers.
The exhibition concludes by reflecting on Simone Martini’s output in the 1330s, when, at the height of his career, he abandoned his successful practice in Siena and moved to Avignon, where he produced frescoes for the church of Notre-Dame des Doms and a major altarpiece for the Franciscan church. Much admired by members of the papal curia who were based there and by the humanist Petrarch, Sienese art planted the seed for a new type of painting north of the Alps, flowering in the courts of Bohemia and, later, Burgundy, as well as in other artistic centers throughout northern Europe.
On view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art from October 13 through January 26, 2025, the exhibition will move to The National Gallery, London, from March 8 through June 22.
Siena: The Rise of Painting
Gallery 999, The Met Fifth Avenue, New York City
October 13, 2024–January 26, 2025
