Siena: The Rise of Painting, 1300 ‒1350

Duccio, The Transfiguration, 1307/8, The National Gallery, London.

The new exhibition at London’s National Gallery invites us to step into early 14th-century Siena, a golden moment for art and catalyst of change when Duccio, Simone Martini and the brothers Pietro and Ambrogio Lorenzetti forged a new way of painting. It aims to show us how these artists painted with a drama that no one hasdseen before. Faces show emotion. Bodies move in space. Stories flow across panels in colourful scenes.

The exhibition reunites, after centuries of separation, the scenes that once formed part of Duccio’s monumental 'Maestà' altarpiece. Panels from Simone Martini’s glittering Orsini polyptych also come together for the first time in living memory. Gilded glass, illuminated manuscripts, ivory Madonnas, rugs and silks show Siena’s creative energy spilling over between painters, metalworkers, weavers and carvers across Europe. The exhibition also includes works by artisans working in Naples, Avignon and further afield.

The exhibition was organised by the National Gallery and The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.