The scene is set: Golden panels, flickering under the spotlight, shine even brighter than they once did in the homes and churches of late medieval Italy. The gilded surfaces, adorned with virtuoso painting and decorative punchwork, draw us into 14th-century Sienese art. The city’s robust, early Renaissance artistic tradition formed the basis of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s exhibit “Siena: The Rise of Painting, 1300–1350.”
Siena might not sound like an intuitive choice for an exhibition of Italian art. Indeed, talks of the Renaissance have consistently focused on the city of Florence as its undisputed point of origin, often at the expense of the neighboring Siena—its longtime rival and sometimes enemy, which Florence eventually surpassed and annexed. But in the 14th century, the southern Tuscan city was one of the most vibrant centers of art. The splendor and elegance of the Sienese school of painting was as much in vogue as Florentine art.
Duccio’s ‘Maestà’
Duccio di Buoninsegna (circa 1255–1318), was the first great master of the golden age of Sienese painting in the early 14th century. His famous “Maestà” was a momentous milestone in the history of art. Installed in the Sienna Cathedral on June 9, 1311, the altarpiece was the first double-sided painting. Today, the altarpiece survives in 33 fragments, dispersed through 10 collections in five different countries. For the first time in some 250 years, the sequence of eight square panel paintings is displayed together at the Met.
Duccio’s towering altarpiece was devoted to the Virgin Mary, who was at the heart of Sienese culture. In 1260, its citizens ceremonially dedicated the city to the Virgin on the eve of a bloody battle against Florence. They attributed their victory to her special protection and made her the symbolic ruler of the city and the ritual focus of Sienese Catholicism ever since.
The central panel in the front depicts a scene known as the “Maestà,” in which the Virgin Mary and the Christ Child sit enthroned and surrounded by a heavenly court of angels and saints. The painting’s religious theme was customized for the Sienese, whose four patron saints kneel prominently in the foreground, praying to the Virgin on behalf of the citizens.
Commissioned to replace an earlier altarpiece, Duccio’s painting roused a sensation both as magnificent art and as a sacred image. It was carried in a solemn procession from the artist’s workshop to the cathedral, accompanied by high government and church officials and attended by the entire Sienese citizenry. An inscription on the painting records Duccio’s prayer on behalf of the city—a rare privilege given to a craftsman: “Holy Mother of God, may you be the cause of peace for Siena, and life for Duccio, because he painted you thus.”
Nevertheless, after serving for almost two centuries as the cathedral’s high altarpiece, the “Maestà” was moved to a side chapel in 1506 to make way for the reconfiguration of the church interior. It was eventually broken down in the 1800s into individual pieces and widely dispersed. The back predella—a bottom row of eight narrative paintings from the Life of Christ—ended up in the collection of six different museums in Siena, London, Madrid, New York, Washington, and Fort Worth, Texas.
Centuries later, their reunion at the Met is worth savoring and remembering. Only by looking at them together can visitors get a fuller sense of the monument’s sheer scale and Duccio’s genius as a visual narrator of nuanced and emotional stories.
These paintings are just one of the many art pieces in the fantastic, dazzling exhibition. From French ivory sculpture to Central Asian silk fabric, from liturgical vessels to private devotional books, the exhibition situates the “rise of painting” within the broader culture of 14th-century Siena and plunges the visitor into a critical historical moment in the medieval-Renaissance transition. Other monumental frescoes and imposing altarpieces by Simone Martini and the Lorenzetti brothers, seldom seen outside of Italy, are also on display at the Met. Needless to say, this is a must-see.
