Siena at the Met

“Siena: The Rise of Painting, 1300-1350” confirmed the view arrived at on our recent trip to Italy, including Siena, that Sienese painting is a cul de sac in the history of art. The exhibition’s first gallery is centered on the Met’s prize Duccio and I cynically wonder if the show was not conceived as a justification of the obscene $45 million the Met, under Philippe de Montebello, paid in a private purchase. I say “obscene” because I feel taxpayer-supported institutions have an obligation to their public and aren’t personal playthings for their director. In all my years passing by the Duccio in the Met’s permanent galleries I have never seen a member of the public stop to look at it. And for reason: it’s not very good art. It’s small, boring and poorly drawn. Gold-ground pictures are a tough sell to begin with: they have no background and their composition tends to formulaic. Here we have an icon-derivative image of an expressionless, long-faced Mary with boneless fingers holding a simulacrum of a child with a pygmy head one-eighth the size of the mother’s. Yes, there is an advance in volume over the Byzantine icon from 50 years before hanging nearby, but little that makes this particular picture powerful, charming or memorable.
Duccio, however, is the cornerstone–raison d’etre–for the exhibition, and his works do get better in the following galleries. The show is a stunning example of the Met’s borrowing power, as no one is likely to ship out their rare Duccio for just anyone. The pinnacle of the exhibition, and reason enough to visit it, is the reconstruction of the back predella of Duccio’s Maesta, the greatest work of Sienese art. Nine of the ten small panels (one is lost) have been placed side by side, just as they would have appeared in 1311 in Siena. The quality and condition vary greatly, and as with any enormous undertaking of the time one can speculate that some episodes or portions could have been painted by assistants, but the presence of the weaker works only makes the highlights stand out more. By far the most striking, and undoubtedly most famous, is the panel owned by the Frick. The Kimbell’s comes next, while others are normally found in London, Madrid and home in Siena. These are narrative scenes, so there is more room for imagination and innovation than in the stock Madonna and Child or Crucifixion scenes. Duccio’s colors can be stunning and his architectural settings charming. It’s not quite Giotto–for one thing the gold backgrounds remain–but it’s an advance. Other works by Duccio, from Boston, Washington, London, give as full a picture of Duccio’s oeuvre as we’ll ever see.
After Duccio, Sienese art devolves on Simone Martini and the Lorenzetti brothers, Pietro and Ambrogio. Simone is not at his best here (compared, say, to the Uffizi), but the Lorenzettis are. Pietro is represented by a rare cut-out “silhouette” Crucifixion and an altarpiece from Arezzo, that is more remarkable for its size and entirety than its images. Ambrogio’s Annunciation (missing from the museum in Siena on my visit) is the single most beautiful painting in the exhibition and a climax of sorts for Sienese art. Then there are four wonderful scenes of the life of St. Nicolas on loan from the Uffizi, which is a tip-off. Real landscapes, not gold backgrounds, and distinguishing expressions instead of stock poses on the active figures. The figures are displayed with realistic perspective, not piled on top of each other as in a Duccio; the only oddity is the Lorenzetti family’s tendency to place pillars mid-scene, even in front of faces. Why I call the Uffizi a tip-off is because Ambrogio Lorenzetti left Siena for Florence in 1325 and these paintings have all the hallmarks of Florentine, not Sienese, art.