Sienese Art: Duccio, Martini, and Lorenzetti

So we're looking at Duccio's painting of the Madonna Enthroned from 1285, and we're going to talk about it as an example of the style from Siena, which was one of the city-states in Italy, along with Florence and Milan and others. And Siena developed its own unique style, and we see that here in Duccio's painting. Exactly. Generally, medieval religious painting was characterized by a very flat sense of depth, an emphasis on ornament, figures that don't look very naturalistic or descriptive. And Duccio takes these general medieval characteristics and goes even further with them. So, for instance, although gold was common in medieval painting, in Siena's Gothic painting established by Duccio, there's lots and lots and lots of gold, which really helps create a very otherworldly sense of representation. For instance, we see behind the Virgin Mary all of this gold, but also the throne doesn't seem to rest realistically on the floor. The angels seem to be floating in midair. And in that throne, we can also see that emphasis on a kind of decorative pattern ornament that creates an otherworldly sense of representation. And I notice that kind of interest in ornamentation and decorativeness also in her drapery, which is sort of fluttering here in a very, very unrealistic way, almost like Duccio is just taking pleasure in that kind of sinuous line. Exactly. And also the very, very elongated figures are another characteristic of the style. So if she stood up, she would be real tall. She would be very, very tall. So let's look at another example of the style of Siena. Here's Simone Martini's altarpiece of the Annunciation with the angel Gabriel here announcing to Mary that she's about to conceive the Christ child. And we have the Holy Spirit here in the form of a dove. So this is a very spiritual moment. And we have that same Sienese style with that interest in representing the otherworldly in that very flat, decorative way. Exactly. Here we have even more gold in the background and even more unrealistic otherworldly sense of space. Look at the figure of the Virgin Mary. She seems even more elongated and tall and skinny than the one that we had seen in the painting by Duccio. And despite all of this otherworldliness, the painters still want us to understand what we're looking at. And so although the space and the representation of the figures may not be very realistic, there's the slightest hint of their reactions and what's going on. And the angel seems to have just arrived in the room. What is the angel holding? That is a laurel leaf that he's presenting to her as a sign of her saintliness. And the lilies here? The lilies represent her purity. And so we're getting all this information about the subject, about what's happening, about Mary's virginity and her purity and the angel kneeling here. But we have all this clearly just the artist's pleasure in these decorative forms. We see Gabriel's cape fluttering back in the wind as he seems to swoop down. Exactly. Again, there's that kind of liquid-like, undulating, long curvilinear line that's characteristic of Sienese painting. So we have a sort of typical medieval interest in representing the otherworldly, using gold to do that. But these sort of added characteristics of the intensity of the gold and the decorative qualities, which we see here in the robe and in the angel's wings and in Mary's drapery, those are the things that characterize this specific style from Siena. Exactly. When we're talking about religious images, anyway. And so this isn't the style that, this isn't like the only thing that they knew how to do in Siena. This is a style that they're intentionally choosing because they're representing something spiritual and otherworldly, and those qualities indicate that. But when they represent something more secular, more secular. Exactly. Well, in some cases, it would be important to do exactly the opposite, to represent something looking very familiar and looking very real. And that's the case of Ambrogio Lorenzetti's paintings of the allegories of good and bad government and the effects of good government and bad government on the city and on the country. And so here we are in the town hall of Siena. That's right. Lorenzetti's painted these frescoes, and they're a really different style than we saw in the Annunciation. That's true. For instance, if we look at the landscape there on the right wall, what we see is the effects of good government on the landscape, and it shows people working in the fields. It shows the landscape receding into the distance. And this is essentially supposed to represent the area around Siena itself. So it wouldn't make sense if Ambrogio Lorenzetti had painted this with a gold background looking unrealistic. The point here is that it's supposed to look like Siena. It's supposed to look like the surrounding countryside. And therefore, here we see an artist choosing to make something look more descriptive, more representational, more realistic, rather than otherworldly. So I think it's really important to remember that these are choices that the artists are making. Naturalism is not a question of skill.