The Met: "Siena: The Rise of Painting, 1300-1350"

The Met's big exhibit for the fall was its Siena: The Rise of Painting, 1300-1350 show, featuring a one-time assemblage the surviving back-side predella paintings of Duccio's Maesta masterpiece. As member and guest we got to do an early viewing, October 12th, before the riff-raff got in. The show requires a few background notes. 1) The title is fairly misleading: people rose to painting before Medieval Siena...some did it in caves 35,000 years ago...Greeks did it, Romans did it, even Byzantines did it (let's do it, "let's fall in love") ...plenty of painting was going on in Italy 1300-1350 outside Siena, e.g., Giotto, who surpassed Duccio and Siena in every important way. 2) Thus, it can be assumed a major point of the exhibit is to again defend the Met's 2004 acquisition of Duccio's Stoclet Madonna, an 8.3"x11" tempera/gold on panel painting, typical of International Gothic, purchased for $45MM. 3) The achievement of the exhibit is the rounding-up from various museums of the surviving back-side bits of the Maesta's predella, which had been cut up and dispersed diversely five centuries ago. A predella is common in early altarpieces, presenting miniature scenes from the life of what ever god or demi-god is being glorified. Altarpieces commonly have front and back sides, the front being the main thing and the back, often in grisaille, folding over it when the front is not on display. The Maesta itself is of course still in Siena, not likely to leave, and the frontal bits and pieces of the predella are still at large. There is plenty more to the exhibit, interesting if you're really into the antecedents of early Italian Renaissance art. I'll present mostly the Duccio predella items and a few samples of the Lorenzettis and Martinis. Especially the Martinis. There's also a Margarita for those interested.

Drum roll, please...

Ta-da...

The Stoclet Madonna; first thing you see upon entering the exhibit

Official story; takes a lot of donors to raise that much money;
according to my calculations, the Stoclet Madonna is the most
valuable painting, per square inch, ever purchased, that is,
$492,880/square inch; imagine what a Rothko or Cy Twombley
would fetch at that rate...the whole thing an instance, if you ask
me, of museum FOMO

Representation of The Maesta, front and back, noting the
front and back predellas (lower bits) as they originally
appeared, way back when, in 1300; study caefully: will be on
the quiz; the Maesta was intended to be the altarpiece for
Siena's cathedral, which was planned to be the largest in the
Christian world; Siena was blowin' and goin' in those days...
until 1348...the plans for the super-cathedral were never
realized

My 2011 photo of The Maesta, clandestinely shot in the museum of 
the Siena cathedral; note lack of (front) predella; the back side of the
Maesta is rarely if ever displayed

Two items from the front predella, an Annunciation, from
the National Gallery of Art, London

And a Nativity, from the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC

And now, the Met's reconstruction of the back-side predella, all in a row;
first, Christ's Temptation on the Temple, from the City of Siena

Temptation of Christ on the Mountain, Frick, NYC

The Calling of Peter and Andrew, National Gallery, Washington

Wedding at Cana, City of Siena

Christ and the Samaritan Woman, Thyssen-Bornemisza,
Madrid

Healing of the Man Born Blind, National Gallery, London

Transfiguration, National Gallery, London

Raising of Lazarus, Kimball, Ft. Worth ("Foat Wuth, Ah Luv Ewe")

All in a row

Moving right along, some of the wooden sculpture being done in 
Siena, Gano di Fazio, early 14th; Musei di Maritime

Simone Martini, Palazzo Pubblica Altarpiece, early 14th

A textile piece, St. Margarita Bonking a Devil, early 14th

Pietro Lorenzetti, Christ before Pilate (Vatican Museum) and Crucifixion (Met),
the generation following Duccio...definitely beginning to look more like
Renaissance work

Martini, Virgin and Child with Four Saints and a Dominican Nun,
1325, Isabella Stewart Granger Museum, Boston; progress, such
as it is, is rarely in a straight line...it would be another century and 
a half before the Byzantine/International Gothic "golden halo" types
fell out of fashion; witness, e.g., Fra Angelica, mid-15th, who was
a master of both styles...IMHO

Ambrogio Lorenzetti, Annunciation, 1344

Ambrogio Lorenzetti, Stories from the Life of Saint
Nicholas, 1330s; nothing at all about the elves or
Rudolf the Red-Nosed...

Ditto; these four paintings from the Uffizi; Ambrogio did
his work mostly in Florence, not Siena

Artsy-fartsy out-take by yours truly, documenting God's
approval of the exhibit; or possibly suggesting that whoever
thought it up should be crucified

With nearly everything in the exhibit coming from some place else,
there is ample opportunity to look at some of the historic registration
labels on the backs of the paintings

Duccio, Virgin and Child with Saints Dominic and Aurea and Assorted
Prophets and Patriarchs, 1312, National Gallery, London