The fourteenth-century Sienese school: Duccio, Simone Martini, the Lorenzettis

Between the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, the city of Siena was one of the most artistically advanced in Italy. The premises of all this have older origins: in the 12th century, in fact, the city, which had long been at the center of trade between Rome and northern Italy, had begun to acquire an increasing political and commercial prestige that quickly made it one of the richest cities on the peninsula. In addition, the consular order that Siena had given itself in the same century helped ensure its political stability.

The expansionist aims of Ghibelline Siena clashed, however, with Guelph Florence, a city with which a heated rivalry arose that led to several clashes, the most famous of which was the Battle of Montaperti in 1260, during which the Sienese inflicted a crushing defeat on the Florentines. However, in 1269 Siena was defeated at the Battle of Colle Val d’Elsa, and this led, perforce, to the city having to open up to the Guelphs: the event was of paramount importance for the history of Sienese art as it allowed the city’s artists to become acquainted with the French miniature of the time. This was because opening up to the Guelphs meant having to establish relations with the Angevins, a French dynasty whose members ruled Naples at the time: establishing political contacts also meant coming into contact with new cultural and artistic circles.

As a result of some internal struggles that followed the political upheavals caused by the battle of Colle di Val d’Elsa, the Government of the Nine, a magistracy composed of members of the city’s Guelph bourgeoisie, was established in Siena in 1287: the Government of the Nine ruled the city until 1355 and succeeded in guaranteeing Siena a long period of peace and prosperity that coincided with the period of maximum splendor of the local art school.

Origins of the Sienese School

The leader of the Sienese school is considered to be Guido da Siena (c. 1230 - c. 1290), who proposed painting under the banner of influences received from the Florentine Coppo di Marcovaldo (c. 1225 - c. 1276), the most important painter in Florence before Cimabue. To find the first major personality, however, we will have to wait for Duccio di Buoninsegna (Siena, c. 1255 - c. 1319): the latter, building on the painting of Cimabue, who was his main model of reference, updated the language of the Florentine painter to what was the Sienese taste, characterized by great elegance and refinement and greater idealization than Florentine painting (exemplary is the Maestà di Siena, 1308-1311, Siena, Museo dell’Opera del Duomo: read an in-depth study of the work here). On the birth of Sienese taste,Byzantine art, which Florentine painters at the time wanted to overcome, also had a certain influence: although in Siena Duccio made an initial attempt to overcome the Byzantine language, he wanted to use it to give greater refinement to his works.

This process of revising Byzantine art developed thanks in part to the arrival in Siena of the two great sculptors Nicola and Giovanni Pisano, from whom painters drew cues for the rediscovery of antiquity: however, lacking paintings from classical antiquity, the earliest reference for painters was Byzantine paintings, which constituted a significant repertoire of elegant stylistic features on which Sienese painters drew to give orientation to local taste.

The apex, from Simone Martini to the Lorenzetti brothers.

Sienese taste probably found its highest degree of perfection in the work of Simone Martini (Siena, 1284 - Avignon, 1344): a pupil of Duccio, Simone Martini brought Sienese art to a very high degree of preciosity, which also found fulfillment in the fact that Simone Martini was a profound connoisseur ofgoldsmithing techniques. In fact, goldsmithing, which was highly developed in the Siena of the time, was another of the “culprits” in the development of refined Sienese taste. This is also responsible for the exceptional profusion of golds and decorativism in Simone Martini’s painting, who, moreover, was also the first artist to apply in painting the purely goldsmith’s technique of punching, that is, the engraving of a mark on a metal surface, but which Simone Martini also applied to the supports for paintings(read an in-depth study of the Orsini Polyptych here). All qualities we find in one of his greatest masterpieces, theAnnunciation, 1333, Florence, Uffizi.

Working on the Assisi site from 1316, Simone Martini came into contact with the art of Giotto, who was an important point of reference for the later leading exponents of the Sienese school, namely the brothers Pietro (Siena, c. 1285 - 1348) and Ambrogio (Siena, c. 1290 - 1348) Lorenzetti. Both contemporaries of Simone Martini, very slightly younger, they were probably both, like Simone, pupils of Duccio. The Lorenzettis positioned themselves as great continuers of the Sienese tradition(read here an in-depth look at their frescoes in the basilica of San Francesco in Siena), although they showed greater openness to the new Giottesque language(read here a review of the major 2017 exhibition on Ambrogio Lorenzetti, with insights into the artist’s life and works).

In particular, Pietro Lorenzetti demonstrated deep reflection on Giottesque spatiality and volumetry, which influenced his art and made him the Sienese painter closest to Giotto. He too, like Simone Martini, worked on the building site of the Basilica of St. Francis in Assisi and could not help but be confronted with Giotto’s now established genius, assimilating, albeit gradually, his inventions and innovations.

His brother Ambrogio Lorenzetti turned out to be more “attached to tradition” than Pietro, but he nevertheless tried to graft Giotto’s spatiality onto the works of Sienese taste, thus producing masterpieces that stood out both for their plasticism and for their very refined line, working not only in Siena but also in the Maremma(read here an in-depth study of Ambrogio’s Maremma works). But Ambrose is best remembered for being the author of the cycle of frescoes of Good Government that decorate the Sala del Consiglio dei Nove in Siena’s Palazzo Pubblico and that date from 1338-1340: the work is an extraordinary and very valuable allegory of the civic values of Siena and the Middle Ages.

The fourteenth-century Sienese school: Duccio, Simone Martini, the Lorenzettis

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