Siena: The Rise of Painting, 1300–1350

by Joanna Cannon, Caroline Campbell (contributor), Laura Llewellyn (contributor)

An exploration of a crucial turning point in Italian art, the early 1300s in the city of Siena

In the early 1300s, the city of Siena gave rise to an extraordinary period of creativity and innovation. Painters, sculptors, and goldsmiths produced remarkable works whose impact was felt far beyond the city’s walls. From vast altarpieces to portable objects for private devotion, the art emanating from Siena left an enduring legacy.

This book explores a crucial turning point in Italian art when the prestige of painting reached new heights. Siena became the centre of a rich exchange of ideas, as painters took inspiration from marble and ivory sculptures, intricate metalwork, and precious imported silks to enhance the power of their work. Travelling beyond their native city, Sienese artists made their mark across Italy and into northern Europe.

Beautifully illustrated and featuring important new scholarship, chapters explore masterpieces by four of Siena’s most illustrious painters―Duccio, Simone Martini, and Ambrogio and Pietro Lorenzetti―alongside objects in other media and from other countries and cultures, encouraging fresh perspectives and dialogues between these groundbreaking works.

Published by National Gallery Global/Distributed by Yale University Press

Exhibition Schedule:

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
(7 October 2024–26 January 2025)

The National Gallery, London
(5 March–22 June 2025)

Genres: Art, Art History, Italy

312 pages, Hardcover

First published August 27, 2024

About the author

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Reviews

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book proved to be a fantastic extended introduction to trecento Sienese art history. I studied the book's primary subjects — Duccio, Pietro & Ambrogio Lorenzetti, and Simone Martini — in former art history classes, but lacked a deeper understanding of the relationship of their work to both their contemporaries in other Italian cities and their successors throughout Europe. The scholars who wrote this book offered an erudite study of these subjects and much more. It was particularly fascinating to learn the following points:
—Simone Martini is considered by many scholars to have been the "official" painter for Siena, much like Giotto was for Florence. Siena is full of publicly funded works by Martini.
—It was common for Sienese artists to move to Florence for commissions in the trecento, but not vice versa.
—"Space and figure achieve a unity and balance that (Ambrogio Lorenzetti) would master in his mature paintings, such as the fresco cycle of Good and Bad Government. It would take Florentine artists until the start of the next century to accomplish such cohesion within the frame of a picture."
—The British cognoscenti greatly admired Sienese painters of the trecento throughout the 19th century. The Sienese trecento painters were long considered inferior to their Florentine counterparts, but this era renewed appreciation of them.
—There is a close connection between the Wilton Diptych and Sienese painters of the early trecento.

[Susan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautifully illustrated and presented book to accompany the National Gallery's current exhibition. This is not a period of art with which I am familiar, so I found it an excellent preview of what I shall be seeing when I attend the exhibition in a few week's time. It has really helped me to understand the period, the art and the painters and to find things I might not have picked up otherwise. It is pretty academic in places but gave me an insight into academic art history I would not have had otherwise.

I heartily recommend this book for others, like me, unfamiliar with the period, particularly to read before going to the exhibition, as I believe my visit will be enhanced from having read this book first.

[Sabine H. · Rating 5 out of 5]

This publication, which accompanies the fantastic exhibition in New York and London, presents the current state of research in many well-founded contributions and places the exhibited objects in diverse relationships with one another, as well as in the broader context of the visual culture(s) of this period. Particularly interesting are the references to functional uses and both formal and thematic references to objects (and not primarily paintings), which demonstrate a very clear transregional exchange. Overall, the significance of Assisi, first and foremost, and then Avignon, becomes clear. I'm not an expert, but I greatly enjoyed exploring these visual worlds using the illustrations and texts.

[Lindsay · Rating 5 out of 5]

Be prepared to enter a golden celestial world.