The Italian city state of Siena in the early 14th century was the set for one of the greatest artistic revolutions in the West, with artists like Duccio, brothers Pietro and Ambrogio Lorenzetti, and Simone Martini redefining the way art was created and consumed.
Entitled Siena: The Rise of Painting 1300-1350, this new exhibition opening at The National Gallery in London this March aims to explore that history by bringing together almost 100 pieces by these four key artists.
But apart from looking at how their techniques and perspectives changed Western art in just a matter of decades, the curators of this exhibition have also united tens of objects from Siena and numerous other countries to illustrate how artists and art techniques influenced each other.
Among the objects found here, there are objects fashioned out of metal, gilded glass, wood, marble, silks, enamel, and ivory; as well as illuminated manuscripts and rugs.
Yet, perhaps the most important reason to visit this exhibition is that it has united some of world’s most beautiful paintings again. By collaborating with The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, where the exhibition opened in October, Siena: The Rise of Painting has brought together surviving panels that have been scatters across the world for centuries.
Among these is Duccio di Buoninsegna’s Maestà, the West’s first double-sided altarpiece which was dismantled at some point in the 1700s. Indeed, since then, this has been the first time the National Gallery’s own panels from the piece will be reunited with the ones from the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza in Madrid and the one at the National Gallery of Art in, Washington DC among others. Then there is also the Orsini Polyptych, whose panels haave long been divided between the Louvre in Paris, the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin, and the Royal Museum of Fine Arts in Antwerp.
Opening on March, 8, until June, 22, Siena: The Rise of Painting is set to be a blockbuster exhibition that is unmissable. Tickets can be purchased directly from The National Gallery’s website.
