Before the Black Death devastated Siena, the city thrummed with energy, expressed in art and architecture designed to dazzle its audience – and which still astonishes 800 years laterIf you want to know the moment of a medieval Italian city’s greatest prosperity, look at the year it began work on its cathedral. In Siena, the magic year was 1226, the start of some 85 years of construction of the duomo, a remarkable gothic structure with an intricately complex, creamy pink facade and stripy, black-and-white campanile. “The scale of ambition is difficult to put into words,” says Laura Llewellyn, one of the curators of The Rise of Painting, the National Gallery’s new exhibition of Sienese art. “The extravagance of it: to appreciate it you need to unknow and unlearn later buildings like the duomos in Florence and St Peter’s in Rome.”But by the 1350s, Siena’s most glorious years in the raging Tuscan sun would be as good as over. After decades of rapid artistic transformation – a half centu...
The article explores Siena's artistic revolution, which flourished between 1226 and the Black Death in the mid-14th century. The city's ambition is evident in its architecture, such as the duomo, and its art, which evolved from Byzantine influences to dynamic, emotional works. The Virgin Mary, revered as a unifying figure, is a central theme in many works, including Simone Martini's *Madonna degli Occhi Grossi* and Duccio's *Maestà*. The Black Death halted Siena's artistic peak, but its legacy remains in its opulent, otherworldly paintings. The exhibition *The Rise of Painting* highlights Siena's innovation, emphasizing its role as a cultural hub distinct from Florence. Key works, such as Ambrogio Lorenzetti's *Allegory of Good and Bad Government*, reflect the city's focus on civic responsibility and governance.