Reviewing Siena

I've been surveying the reviews and responses to Renaissance Siena: Art of a City which opened at the NG London last week. I'm not going to review it myself; in all likelihood I won't get to the show until sometime next month. Still, it's interesting and salutary, I think, to gauge the mood of the art historical press about an exhibition that is causing debate.

Jonathan Jones, with his usual wit and panache, writes in the Guardian that the exhibition marks a certain mission drift on the part of the gallery; more specifically, Jones sees the gallery allowing shows that "chase their tales up scholarly blind alleys." Maybe it's down to the gap at the top- no replacement for Charles Saumarez Smith yet- that has allowed curators to use shows as vehicles for the idiosyncratic forcing of a point. Jones likes the exhibition- who wouldn't be charmed at some of the art on display?- but believes that it is ultimately silly. Wisely, Jones advises scrutiny of the previous generation of painters like Duccio and Sassetti outside the exhibition but in the gallery; only then can the visitor get a sense of Siena's historical and artistic development. Jones identifies Matteo di Giovanni's Ascanio altarpiece- top- as the best of a mediocre bunch, and although he finds much to admire and marvel at in the much touted Domenico Beccafumi, he fails to measure up to Florentine mannerists like Pontormo. I think that Jones is right on the money when he says that Beccafumi is a "connoisseur's artist", a painter whose curiously self-absorbed art appealed to a mildly deranged elite.

Brian Sewell known for his asperity in his reviews, turns in a balanced and illuminating overview of the show in the Evening Standard. Sewell ponders whether a century after the calamity of the Black Death in 1348, Sienese art was sufficiently resilient to offer a challenge to Florence, just 30 miles up the road. Naturally, Sewell concludes that Siena could not: it lacked the humanist powerhouse that produced such heavyweights as Raphael, Leonardo, Michelangelo and Giorgione. Far from being concerned with scientific matters such as proportion and perspective, Sienese quattrocento painting remained marginal to the main intellectual thrust of the Renaissance. Siena's fame has been recent, since it remained out of fashion until aesthetically inclined scholars like John Pope-Hennessy- name checked by Sewell here- pleaded for a moment of contemplation in which to absorb the beauty and charm of this archaic art. For Sewell, Matteo again stands at the top of the heap whilst an attributed work by Benvenuto di Giovanni is of "such miserable quality that it deserves to be neither in this exhibition nor in the permanent collection." Sewell is equally critical of Beccafumi whose only claim to contemporaneity is his colour, although that is filched from Michelangelo's Sistine ceiling. Really? I'd never have guessed!

Finally, last week on the BBC's Culture Show, T.V. pundit Andrew Graham Dixon was sent to Siena itself to be overawed by Beccafumi's ceiling in the Palazzo Pubblico-right-, although he also dropped in on Pinturicchio's frescoes- based on Raphael's designs- in the Piccolomini Library in Siena Cathedral. Beccafumi's frescoes out in Siena do impress, but it may be significant that AGD muttered at the start of the broadcast "I've always preferred Florence to Siena."

I don't want to knock Sienese art; I'm sure that there will be works of charm and beauty in the show to make the journey down to London worthwhile. Still, I wonder about the premise of this exhibition andmore importantly its time span. I'm currently teaching a course on Sienese art, but my Sienese journey starts in the time of Duccio and ends in the period covered by the NG exhibition. I shall reserve judgment about the paintings in the show until I've seen them for myself, but I can't help thinking that the curators of this show have miscalculated greatly in choosing to use the exhibition as a vehicle for their questionable thesis.

Is It a Rembrandt?

I woke up to the news from the BBC's website that this painting, auctioned by Moore, Allen and Innocent, was thought to be a Rembrandt by some of the bidders at the auction. According to the firm's Philip Allwood:

""When I first saw it I said it looked very much like a Rembrandt and was assured by the client it had been checked out years ago and it wasn't..."

The Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam concurred, but that cuts no ice with the bidders who drove up the price: it shot past its reserve of pounds 1,500 to a cool 2 million.

Readers of this blog may recall that something like this happened earlier this year when bidders at Gildings, recognised a Titian despite that auction house not being convinced of its authenticity. Looking at this new painting, I don't immediately peg it as autograph, though you can hardly judge from a small digital image. It could be by one of his pupils, but they tended to show themselves dressed up as the master and this individual looks like Rembrandt himself. If it is by Rembrandt, it looks like it fits into the late 1620s when the artist is using gorgets. Flicking through the catalogue of Rembrandt Self- Portraits held in London in the 1990s, I see that the closest it comes to is the Self-Portrait with Gorget, known through two versions, one in Nuremberg and one at the Hague- right. The expression of the artist here is so different from the Moore, Allen and Innocent 'Rembrandt'- more composed and dignified rather than laughing out loud. I can see why the Rijksmuseum have their doubts, because although the costume gels with the kind of armorial portrait produced in 1629, the laughing out loud expression just doesn't fit the mood of those pictures. Here, it's like somebody has painted a blend of Rembrandt and Frans Hals. Still, I'm intrigued and eagerly await developments.

Renaissance Superhero

Is it a bird or is it a plane? No, it's the Blessed Agostino Novello performing his posthumous miracles in the Sienese painter, Simone Martini's altarpiece (left) dedicated to the churchman. Composed of one large central panel depicting a large Agostino as well as four surrounding narrative panels in which an airborne Agostino appears, it inspires comparisons with the likes of Superman, Spiderman et all.

My favourite panel is the one where Agostino swoops down from the sky to catch a child who has fallen off a balcony. At least I think that's what he's doing because it isn't clear; he looks like he's giving blessing to the child rather than saving it! And there's a panel of a child being ravaged by a ferocious wolf while Agostino appears from behind a rooftop. Still, like in Batman and Superman, you know all will turn out well in the end. Agostino has a hot line to the divine; why else would an angel be whispering into his ear in the central panel?! Although this is clearly a serious subject, the flying antics of this 13th century Augustinian theologian provoked gales of laughter when I showed it to my students last week.

Poussin on Tour

Some time ago I expressed my misgivings about the Louvre's decision to loan Poussin's canonical masterpiece Et in Arcadia Ego- left- to the High Museum in Atlanta. I learnt today via Lee Rosenbaum about Didier Rkyner's concern that the painting still hadn't returned to France. It arrived at the High on 30th, January 2007. That makes 8 months that it's been away from the Louvre! But as Rykner says, it has now gone to Denver until 6th January, 2008.

This contradicts what the Louvre said, namely that the Poussin would be loaned for five months. As Both Rosenbaum and Rykner point out, from Jan 07 to Jan 08 is far more than five months. As a Poussin scholar, I'm extremely worried about this painting travelling so much. Such a landmark painting is vulnerable to accident or theft, and apart from that there's the issue of the Louvre audience not being able to see it for a year. What would happen if the National Gallery in London were to loan Titian's Bacchus and Ariadne (right), say, for the same period of time? It would deprive the audience over here of a painting that they have every right to see when they visit. It's the nation's collection, isn't it?

Not that the National Gallery doesn't care about audiences who won't or can't come to see the great works in London. Over here in the UK, they occasionally circulate important paintings to lesser known provincial galleries so that people who don't go down to metropolitan galleries get the chance to see them. But the loan periods for such "travelling" type exhibitions are strictly observed. Surely the Louvre as the leading art gallery in the world should observe the same rules, especially with such an important painting?

Problems in Sienese Painting

One of the courses that I'm teaching at the moment is on painting in Siena; it was created in response to the imminent exhibition in London: Renaissance Siena: Art for a City. However, unlike the London show which is covering 1460-1530, definitely the least inspiring period of Sienese art, I'm looking at the whole school, from its inception back in the thirteenth-century up to artists such as Sodoma who worked with Raphael at the birth of the high Renaissance. One of the most intriguing problems that I've encountered in the early weeks of the course has been the issue of the dating and placing of a number of images of the Madonna, a central icon of Sienese history and culture. In fact, you could trace the whole evolution of the school simply by looking at images of Mary and the Christ child alone- over 50% of works painted in the city were of them.

A good example of an important Madonna is Guido da Siena's Madonna and Child (above), probably painted in the 1270s, but inscribed 1221 on the panel. Why the later dating then if the panel has an earlier date upon it? Well, that's where the problem of dating early Sienese painting comes in. Look at this image of an unknown painter's Madonna and Child, rejoicing in the unforgettable name of the Madonna degli occhi grossi (Madonna of the large eyes). This picture was probably painted in 1250, 29 years after the Guido, but look at its unsophisticated style compared to the Guido panel which was, supposedly, painted before it. One solution is that the date on the Guido Madonna could refer to the death date of St Dominic- the painting is located in a church in Siena named after him. What is also interesting and significant is that Guido's Madonna and Child is numbered amongst a group of paintings of this subject which were re-painted in later years. As Diana Norman says in her Painting in Late Medieval and Renaissance Siena, the modelling of the face of Guido's Madonna resembles Duccio's Madonna in, arguably, the most important painting ever produced in Siena- the Maestà.

A theory among scholars and restorers is that the re-painting was due to patrons wanting a less Byzantine kind of art and a more Gothic one. Take another panel of the Madonna (left), this time by Coppo di Marcovaldo, a 13th century Florentine painter working in Siena. This hints at the Byzantine formula: strong curve from ear to chin; patterning of the Madonna's robe instead of natural falling drapery. But the Madonna's face has been softened, almost certainly due to -re-painting, sometime in the 14th century. An x-ray of Coppo's painting from the EDITECH in Florence betrays changes, although exact motivation for these cannot be pinpointed. There is a definite alteration; the original image looms up which gives some indication of what it must have looked like in its undoctored form. The lead white pigment was used liberally by Coppo to emphasise the underlying structure of the face. As scholars have surmised, this stylistic updating may have been in response to Duccio's Maestà, which really defined a completely new vision of the Maddona in Siena.

Although I tend to concentrate more on the later Renaissance rather than this earlier period, I'm glad that I took up the challenge to teach a course on this kind of painting- it's proving very rewarding and popular. I only wish this kind of art was going to be in the forthcoming National Gallery exhibition instead of the likes of Beccafumi who doesn't represent Siena's finest hour, by any stretch of the imagination.

Lost Leonardo Recovered

Just heard via Ben Sweeney who's working on syndactyly in Leonardo. Ben tells me that Leonardo's Madonna of the Yarnwinder (left), stolen from the Duke of Buccleuch in 2003, has been recovered. The Times has the story here. This has yet to be confirmed of course, but if true, will prove to be the greatest art find for several years.

Ben's web site can be found here; he currently has an article under consideration with the medical journal, the Lancet, and I gather there are plans for an interdisciplinary conference at Harvard. Good luck to him with both!