For my wife, Barbara, and me, the best exhibition we saw in the past year was the one that most relates to our collecting interests: “Siena: The Rise of Painting, 1300–1350,” which debuted at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York before traveling to the National Gallery in London. We saw it in New York this past fall, where, under the direction of Stephan Wolohojian, the Met’s chief curator of European painting, it was a masterpiece of museum presentation. The quality of the paintings and caliber of the loans were unprecedented in the United States, and the more than 100 artworks on view—each one perfectly chosen—were complemented by the incredible design, lighting, spatial organization, placement, and wall colors. Every aspect was a master class in the art of mounting a first-class museum exhibition.
Inspired by this exhibition’s celebration of four key Sienese artists—Duccio di Buoninsegna, Simone Martini, Pietro Lorenzetti, and Ambrogio Lorenzetti—I decided to take a refresher course on these artists and their contemporaries, and planned a weeklong return to Perugia, Assisi, Florence, and, of course, Siena. In Perugia and Assisi, I revisited the 13th-century forerunners, such as the Master of Saint Francis, with his magnificent Crucifix (1272) in Perugia and his unforgettable frescoes in the Lower Church of the Basilica of Saint Francis in Assisi. Cimabue’s spectacular and recently restored fresco of the Madonna Enthroned with the Child, St. Francis, St. Dominic, and two Angels (ca. 1285–88) is only steps away. And a stone’s throw from that glorious Cimabue Madonna are the extraordinary, frescoed contributions of Pietro Lorenzetti and Simone Martini. Together, the contributions of Master of Saint Francis, Cimabue, Pietro Lorenzetti, and Simone Martini, as well as the work of many others, make the Lower Church Basilica one of the great art destinations in all of Italy.
Of course, the Basilica’s Upper Church is another of Italy’s prime art attractions, and it involves only walking up a flight of stairs. The main draw here are the 28 monumental frescoes concerning the life of St. Francis, arranged in three tiers, with the narrative progressing from top to bottom. The attribution of this magnificent creation has long been debated; ambiguities and inconsistencies in the style of certain frescoes have raised questions about the original attribution to Giotto.
On this visit, thanks to the assistance of friends, a small group of us was able to view the Basilica at night by candlelight— an experience that will stay with me for the rest of my life. With the assistance of knowledgeable historians who accompanied us, we learned that the often-debated presence of Giotto has been carefully established. The prevailing view now is that he began as one of the many artists working on the upper tier of frescoes, under the possible direction of Cimabue, but Giotto eventually emerged as the greatest contributor to the cycle. By the time one reaches the lower and most accessible tier, there is broad agreement that we are looking at early Giotto. The fact that we can so clearly see the founding of Florentine art in the Upper Church, and the founding of Sienese art only a few steps down in the Lower Church—at virtually the exact moment—is one of the most remarkable occurrences in all of art history.
The active group of San Franciscan Friars who live, study, teach, and work at the Basilica invited us to share a communal meal with them in their residence, located right off the Upper Church. This was a moving and memorable experience demonstrating that the spirit of St. Francis of Assisi remains very much alive.
In Florence, I looked again at the same crosscurrents between Sienese and Florentine painting. As always, the Uffizi displays Duccio’s nearly 15-foot-tall Rucellai Madonna (ca. 1285), along with glorious and comparable works by his Florentine colleagues, Giotto and Cimabue, providing us with the clearest possible snapshot of the interaction between the art of these two great schools. However, it was in Siena, my last stop on this trip, that I had the most extraordinary experience.
At the Duomo di Siena and its accompanying Museo dell’Opera, we were able to see the role of sculpture in the development of art in Siena. Among the highlights are the bronze reliefs of Donatello—Barbara and I are fortunate enough to own two sculptures by this renowned artist—and the marble sculptures of Arnolfo di Cambio. (We recently acquired a portrait by Arnolfo in stone, dating to the 1290s.) Seeing their work in such quantity and detail was yet another thrill of this magnificent excursion.
Barbara and I had revisited Siena several years ago to see an unforgettable exhibition of Ambrogio Lorenzetti’s work. Shown in only one venue, the city’s Santa Maria della Scala Museum, this survey was one of the most sensitively displayed exhibitions of religious art we had ever seen. On my return visit, friends had arranged for me to climb the scaffolding where the conservation of his masterpiece, The Allegory of Good and Bad Government (1338–39), is underway. Usually, the public views the work from a considerable distance, but here was a rare opportunity to see the extraordinary detail in the faces and body language of every figure, even though the artist must have known that few would ever be close enough to appreciate it in such extreme close-up.
The single most significant revelation came from viewing the large landscape on the extreme right, in the cycle’s Effects of Good Government in the Country. Seeing it up close and being able to observe every brushstroke felt like witnessing the birth of modern landscape painting. Gone were the typical shrub-like trees growing out of a rocky hillside, a common feature in most gold-ground landscape paintings of the period. Instead, there is a true horizon, vivid depictions of all manner of flora and fauna, and hunters and falconers placed in proper perspective against the land and the sky. The scene is beautifully unified in time and space, and on a majestic and monumental scale.
Barbara and I collect 19th-century French painting, as well as Renaissance painting and sculpture, and our two favorite artists of the period are Courbet and Corot. Returning home from my Italian excursion, I looked again at their revolutionary 19th-century landscapes, and I without a doubt felt a straight line leading me back to the unique and timeless creation of Ambrogio Lorenzetti. Of the four creators of Sienese painting, I believe this landscape may mark Ambrogio as the most extraordinary visionary.
