Siena’s art is currently stealing the global limelight. The blockbuster exhibition Siena: the Rise of Painting 1300-1350 brought masterpieces from the city’s golden age to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and from 8 March, it is on show at the National Gallery in London (until 22 June). At the Musée du Louvre, a new show on the Florentine painter Cimabue features panel paintings by Duccio, the great Sienese artist of the early Renaissance.
But there is also a great deal happening backstage in Siena, with several projects transforming the ways Sienese painting is presented and understood.
The most important is an overhaul of the Pinacoteca Nazionale di Siena, which traces the development of Sienese art from the 13th to the 17th centuries. The Pinacoteca’s director, Axel Hémery, says that when he joined in 2022, aspects of the museum had not changed since its founding in the 1930s. His team has grown dramatically; the galleries are undergoing a redesign; the website has been revamped, and the scope of programming and collaborations has expanded. It is becoming, at last, Hémery says, a museum with “European standards”.
The Pinacoteca won “autonomy” in 2021, a status granted to a growing number of Italian museums since 2014. Historically, the country’s museums were governed by a local administrative body, often responsible for dozens of institutions. With autonomy, a policy introduced by the former minister of culture, Dario Franceschini, they gained control over their finances, management structure, research and resources.
The most profound change at the Pinacoteca is the reorganisation of the galleries. Hémery and his team, which now counts five art historians, are seeking to focus on highlights of the collection, as well as tracing changes in style over time. He hopes to take conversations about Sienese art beyond the 14th century. “If we succeed in convincing people of the greatness of the 15th and 16th century in Siena, we should have done the job”.
New partnerships have enabled bold curatorial decisions. A project with the Galleria dell’Accademia in Florence, for example, has allowed the Pinacoteca to reunify the Triptych of St. Clare. The arrangement places a central panel depicting a Madonna and Child—housed in the Galleria dell’Accademia—between two wings featuring the stories of saints, owned by the Pinacoteca. It was first proposed by the art historian Miklos Boskovits around 25 years ago, but remains hotly debated: some art historians argue, for example, that a central Virgin and Child motif cannot be united with the life of saints in this way, and some question the visual correlation between the pieces. To Hémery, it is an opportunity to position Siena more centrally in debates about Renaissance art.
Axel Hémery and Cecile Hollberg, the former director of Florence’s Galleria dell’Accademia, with the Triptych of St Clare, which the two institutions reassembled Photo: Pinacoteca Nazionale di Siena
“Why not bring back to Siena a painting which nobody sees in Florence? If, after a few years of exhibition, everybody says it doesn’t belong together, we will separate it,” Hémery says. “Some Sienese art historians can be a bit dogmatic; we must try to help people make their own judgment.”
With the help of the curator Donatella Capresi, Hémery has formed an “association of friends” of the Pinacoteca, which garnered 400 applicants in the first few months. Visitor numbers have doubled since 2022.
A major deadline looms: the work on the museum must complete by the summer of 2026, in order not to lose money granted through Italy’s post-Covid-19 resilience credits. But Hémery is optimistic.
“I think it was the best choice of my life to apply for this job,” he says.
New insights on an Old Master
Just down the road at Opera del Duomo, a technical examination has breathed new life into Siena’s most famous work of art, Duccio’s Maestà. This monumental, double-sided altarpiece is a prime example of Sienese art in the period leading up to 1348, a time of extraordinary artistic achievement before the city was devastated by the Black Death. Such was the excitement around the Maestà that, upon completion in 1311, it was paraded through the city to the cathedral.
The front panel of Duccio’s Maestà (1308-11) Photo: Wikimedia Commons
The investigation, initiated by curators of Siena: The Rise of Painting and led by the Opificio delle Pietre Dure (OPT) in Florence, focused on the narrative panels depicting scenes from the life of Christ and the Virgin. On the predella, or back base, techniques such as infrared reflectography and UV fluorescence revealed underdrawing by unknown hands, providing proof of the existence of an organised workshop. This included areas of freehand drawing, preparatory models, and pentimenti—imagery that was slightly changed or not used.
Analysis has brought the sophistication of Duccio’s treatment of space to the fore, and showed how, “already in the undermodelling phase”, he wished to emphasise “the three-dimensional physicality of the bodies”, Sandra Rossi and Emanuela Daffra of the OPT tell The Art Newspaper in an email. This, they add, underlines the stylistic connections between Duccio and his fellow Renaissance pioneer Giotto, and supports the suggestion that both studied under Cimabue, who laid the groundwork for many of the younger painters’ innovations.
Detail of the crucifixion scene in Duccio di Boninsegna’s Maestà; analysed using infrared reflectography; detail 1600 nm. The scan shows freehand underdrawing using a liquid medium © Archivio Opificio delle Pietre Dure; Firenze
The OPT team analysed two other paintings in the gallery, including the Nativity of the Virgin by Pietro Lorenzetti, which they have conserved for inclusion in Siena: the Rise of Painting. Results of their analysis of the Maestà will be revealed at a conference hosted by the National Gallery in London on 20 June. The predella panels, meanwhile, have been brought together for the London show.
An installation view of Ambrogio Lorenzetti’s The Allegory of Good and Bad Government (1308), featuring Effects of Bad Government in the City (left) and Allegory of the Bad Government (right) Photo: Route66
Five minutes’ walk away at the Palazzo Pubblico, The Allegory of Good and Bad Government (1338-39) by Ambrogio Lorenzetti—Pietro’s brother—has been undergoing technical investigation. This series of three frescoes lines the walls of the Sala dei Nove (salon of nine), the room where a rotating group of elected citizens made decisions about the city between 1287 and 1355. It conveys with startling allegorical precision the impact of fair or cruel rule on a population—and feels as relevant now as ever.
“The Good and Bad Government frescoes are the apogee of Ambrogio’s achievements as allegorical painter,” says Laura Llewellyn, one of the curators of the National Gallery’s show. “They show observation and imagination in equal measure.”
- Siena: the Rise of Painting 1300-1350 is at the National Gallery, London, 8 March-22 June
