From 8 March to 22 June 2025, the Nationwide Gallery in London presents the exhibition “Siena: The Rise of Painting 1300‒1350”
Supply: Nationwide Gallery · Picture: Duccio, ‘The Annunciation’, 1307/8‒11 © The Nationwide Gallery, London
The exhibition of roughly 100 works will discover the evolving standing of portray among the many arts of Europe and present the central position that Sienese artists performed on this story, at residence, in different Italian centres, and within the cities and courts of Europe.
The exhibition will convey collectively a number of surviving panels from the monumental double-sided altarpiece often known as the ‘Maestà’, painted by Sienese artist Duccio di Buoninsegna (energetic 1278, died 1319) for the town’s cathedral. That is the primary double-sided altarpiece in Western portray, and marks a elementary shift in narrative artwork. This remarkably complicated work was dismantled within the 18th century. The Nationwide Gallery’s personal three panels from the ‘Maestà’, might be reunited with different work from this ensemble detailing episodes from Christ’s life. These embody ‘Christ and the Woman of Samaria’ from the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid and ‘The Calling of the Apostles Peter and Andrew’ from the Nationwide Gallery of Artwork, Washington DC.
One other reunion would be the ‘Orsini Polyptych’ by Sienese artist Simone Martini (1284‒1344). This can be a folding murals made for personal devotion, most likely for Cardinal Napoleone Orsini, who belonged to probably the most influential princely households of medieval and Renaissance Italy. In the present day it’s divided between the Louvre, Paris, the Royal Museum of Effective Arts, Antwerp and the Gemäldegalerie, Berlin. All six panels – ‘Christ bearing the Cross’, ‘Crucifixion’, ‘Descent from the Cross’ and ‘Entombment’ (depicted on the entrance of the folding panting); and ‘The Archangel Gabriel’ and ‘The Virgin of the Annunciation’ (seen on the reverse), might be introduced collectively for the Nationwide Gallery’s exhibition.
Different reunions embody two triptychs by Duccio – The Virgin and Youngster with Saint Dominic and Saint Aurea, and Patriarchs and Prophets, (about 1312–15) from the Nationwide Gallery, London; and ‘The Crucifixion’; ‘The Redeemer with Angels’; ‘ Saint Nicholas’; ‘Saint Clement’, (1311–18) from the Museum of Effective Arts, Boston. They appear to have been conceived as a pair for a person, probably Cardinal Niccolò da Prato, and so they have matching decorations on their exterior wings.
