Andrew Lambirth

Doing the state some service

At university I had a tutor who would announce once a year, when the subject duly came round, ‘I’m too emotionally involved with Simone Martini. I can’t lecture on him. I’m now going to the Buttery. Any or all of you are welcome to join me there.’ And he would depart, trailing clouds of glory for the more romantically minded, but furthering my education in Sienese painting not a jot. I could have done with this book then.

For Simone Martini is one of the key figures discussed in this excellent new study, an early Sienese master along with the Lorenzetti brothers, Pietro and Ambrogio. The book’s subtitle is ‘The Art of a City Republic (1278-1477)’ and the text analyses the relationship between politics and art, and the new urban realism which came out of it. ‘No other art,’ writes Hyman, ‘has engaged so imaginatively with the experience of moving about in one’s own city.’ Sienese painting is distinguished by a sense of spatial experimentation (the architecture lovingly and accurately depicted), by a warm intensity of colour and by a delight in narrative.

Many of the religious pictures here discussed are depictions of the Virgin, for the city maintained a special relationship with the Madonna, and elevated her worship to a cult. (Apparently, at least half of all commissioned Sienese paintings were of her.) The first masterpiece to be examined is by Duccio (c. 1255-1319), his great polyptych for the high altar of the cathedral — the Maestà, or ‘Virgin and Christ Child Enthroned in Majesty with Angels and Saints’. In this beautiful panel painting, Duccio manipulates the medium of egg tempera with great delicacy, in rhythmic stipplings and hatchings, building up to gold leaf for the haloes.

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