Christie's: Graphic Masterpieces by Rembrandt van Rijn – Part II. 5 December 2024

 

Rembrandt Harmensz. Van Rijn (1606-1669), Christ crucified between the two Thieves:    'The Three Crosses', drypoint, 1653. Estimate: £800,000 – 1,200,000

LONDON – Building on the unprecedented success of the first sale from this fabled collection, Christie’s is pleased to present The Sam Josefowitz Collection: Graphic Masterpieces by Rembrandt van Rijn – Part II. Taking place on 5 December 2024 during Christie’s Classic Week, the auction will feature 90 fine and rare prints from this outstanding private collection. Rembrandt’s etchings were an enduring passion for the late Sam Josefowitz, whose collection of the Dutch master’s graphic works remains unparalleled by any other 20th-century collector.

The dedicated auction offers a compelling insight into Rembrandt’s masterful and experimental approach to printmaking, featuring a comprehensive selection of works encompassing his entire career: from the immediacy of his early self-portraits and studies of beggars, through the innovative depiction of Biblical scenes and landscapes, to his late years of the highly finished portraits of patrons and friends, studies of nudes, and one extremely rare erotic print. The collection includes several important masterpieces and many fine sheets whose historic provenance, in some cases, can be traced back to the 17th-century.

Tim Schmelcher, International Specialist, Prints and Multiples, Christie’s London: “We are delighted to present The Sam Josefowitz Collection: Graphic Masterpieces by Rembrandt van Rijn – Part II, following the remarkable success of last year’s sale. This collection stands as the finest private ensemble of Rembrandt’s graphic works, and its depth is truly unparalleled. Sam Josefowitz’s passion for Rembrandt’s prints was a lifelong pursuit, driven by the artist’s inventive techniques and profound humanity. This auction offers a rare opportunity to acquire some of Rembrandt’s most significant and elusive works, including masterpieces like The Three Crosses and the extremely rare The Monk in the Cornfield. These prints not only showcase Rembrandt’s technical brilliance but also his ability to evoke deep emotion and timeless narratives in the smallest of details. We are privileged to continue sharing Sam Josefowitz’s extraordinary vision with collectors around the world.”

Christ crucified between the two Thieves: 'The Three Crosses'  (1653) - this is Rembrandt’s most ambitious and demanding print, a tour de force of draftmanship and printmaking. The artist presents the narrative of the Passion of Christ at the decisive moment, scratching the dramatic scene directly into the copper plate. The impression, previously in the collection of Felix Somary, a renowned collector of prints by Rembrandt and Dürer, is a magnificent example of the fourth state: Rembrandt reworked the plate drastically from the previous state, depicting now a different scene of the narrative, the very instance in which Christ cries out, the moment of greatest drama, despair and chaos. The turmoil of light and darkness and the dramatic tones of the scene are rendered with the heavy vertical shading, with the drypoint a richly black, coal-like burr particularly pronounced and impressive in the Josefowitz impression.

Woman at the Bath with a Hat beside her  (1658) - of the ten prints Rembrandt created between 1658 and 1661, six depict nude or partially clothed women, a result of live drawing sessions likely attended by the artist. One of the most intimate examples is Woman at the Bath with a Hat beside her, where the black hat on the bench subtly hints at a male presence. The nude woman is seated frontally to the artist and the viewpoint is close to the spectator. The beauty of this etching lies not only in the figure’s pose but also in its open composition, the delicately worked plate, and the smooth Japan paper, which enhances the texture of her skin and the soft play of light on her body.

The Bridge at Klein Kostverloren on the Amstel ('Six's Bridge')  (1645) – one of Rembrandt’s most admired and rarest landscapes, almost opposite in style to the elaborate grandeur of his famous The Three Trees, Six’s Bridge is evidence of the artist’s ability to conjure up an image out of very little. Possibly executed (entirely or partly) en plein air, its pared-down composition and ‘unfinished’ look anticipate the approach later embraced by the French Impressionists and German Expressionists. With just a few lines, Rembrandt captures the expansive atmosphere of a bright summer’s day, while the low viewpoint, directional bridge, and perfectly placed spire between the trees create an elegant and harmonious composition.

The Monk in the Cornfield  (circa 1646) – this is one of the rarest works in Rembrandt's printed oeuvre, with only 18 known impressions, all but this one held in public collections. It has only appeared at auction once in the last thirty years. The rarity is undoubtedly due to their overtly erotic content: a copulating couple, a monk and a milkmaid, at the edge of a cornfield in summer, out of sight, as they believe, from any observers. While some impressions may have been destroyed out of moral inhibitions, The Monk in the Cornfield was never intended for a wider market, but only printed in small numbers for a close circle of friends and patrons.

Beggar seated on a Bank  (1630) - this engaging and expressive print has always been referred to as a Self-Portrait in disguise, combining two of Rembrandt’s preferred subjects of his early graphic works: himself and mendicants. The artist’s humanity and empathy towards destitute people couldn’t be more poignant: he literally put himself in their shoes and ragged clothes, a unique instance of ‘down-dressing’ in his printed oeuvre. The expression of fury in his face echoes his Self-Portrait open-mouthed, as if shouting: Bust (lot 2 in the sale). Formally, the etching stands out for its early use of light and shadow over descriptive lines, marking a new exploration of tonality in the artist’s early work.

Woman with the Arrow  (1661) - once belonging to Felix Somary, this is one of the rarest nudes in Rembrandt’s graphic oeuvre, and his penultimate print. The mysterious, evocative portrayal of a nude woman seen from behind, ambiguously holding an arrow, is the last of the six etchings of a nude or partially clothed woman the Dutch artist made between 1658 and 1661. The practice of nude drawing classes emerged in Amsterdam in the 17th century, among groups of like-minded artists and their pupils in their studios. The privacy of this setting led to a degree of naturalism in the depiction of the naked models and an informality entirely new in the history of art. The figure posing here turns her head to look at the face of a young man, partially obscured, gazing at her from the shadows, presumably one of Rembrandt's students.

Gauguin in the World

 

Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, 

November 3, 2024, through February 16, 2025

The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, is the only U.S. venue for an ambitious exhibition of the work of French Post-Impressionist artist Paul Gauguin (1848–1903). Organized by independent curator Henri Loyrette, former director of the Louvre and the Musée d’Orsay, Paris, and leading scholar of 19th-century French painting, the exhibition offers new perspectives on Gauguin’s life and work, artistic networks and influences, and contemporary legacies, both artistic and historical. Gauguin in the World will be on view at the MFAH from November 3, 2024, through February 16, 2025. The Houston presentation follows the exhibition’s debut in Australia in June, at the National Gallery of Art, Canberra, in partnership with Art Exhibitions Australia. 

Paul Gauguin, Femmes de Tahiti 1891, oil on canvas, 69.0 x 91.5, Don Countess Vitali, 1923. © Musée d’Orsay, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais / Patrice Schmidt

“Twentieth-century European and American art would never have developed in the ways that it did were it not for Gauguin,” commented Gary Tinterow, director and Margaret Alkek Williams Chair of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. “He was the key predecessor to the different strands of Modernism that developed through Picasso and Matisse, challenging what he perceived as a culture that had reached a dead end and renewing it by exploring and embracing non-Western art. Gauguin was controversial in his own time and remains so today. The scope of this exhibition, and the thoughtful, wide-ranging perspectives on Gauguin’s work offered by the catalogue’s authors, promise to illuminate the artist in all of his artistic complexity.”

Paul Gauguin, Trois tahitiens (Three Tahitians), 1899, oil on canvas, National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh, presented by Sir Alexander Maitland in memory of his wife Rosalind 1960.

“Gauguin in the World will offer an exceptional opportunity to understand the astonishing range of the artist’s achievement,” noted Ann Dumas, MFAH consulting curator for the exhibition. “Fusing influences as diverse as European Old Masters, Peruvian potters, and Egyptian tomb painters, Gauguin created not only sumptuous and richly colored paintings, but also developed entirely original methods of print making, and sculptures in wood and ceramic, dissolving conventional boundaries between art forms. His influence on avant-garde has been profound and continues in our own time.”

Paul Gauguin, Le toit blue or Ferme au Pouldu (The blue roof or Farm at Le Pouldu) 1890, National Gallery of Australia, Kamberri/Canberra, purchased 2024 with the assistance of the National Gallery Foundation

About the Exhibition 
Gauguin in the World chronicles what curator Loyrette characterizes as Gauguin’s “inner quest for elsewhere” through an expansive survey of his work, from its Impressionist beginnings in Paris, through a period of exploration to Denmark, Brittany, Provence, and Martinique, to its culmination in his last years in Oceania, where he created some of his most iconic paintings. While Gauguin in the World is a comprehensive survey of Gauguin’s prolific career, Loyrette underscores that the show’s narrative is constructed from the perspective of the artist’s last works: “When Gauguin landed in the Marquesas in September 1901, he knew that he had reached his journey’s end; he had at last found his ‘true homeland,’ the place to which he had always aspired. In the 20 months before his death, he continued to develop his art while, in his writings, he set out to review his career as a whole. This is the starting point for an exhibition that reveals that introspection and the art that preceded it, returning to the questions that haunted him as an artist—the challenges that he set himself and solved in his quest for his own identity.”

aul Gauguin, Portrait de Madeleine Bernard (Portrait of Madeleine Bernard), 1888, oil on canvas, Musée de Peinture et de Scupture, Grenoble, France. Photo © RMN-Grand Palais / Art Resource, NY.

The exhibition will be organized across six galleries, presenting the arc of Gauguin’s career from the 1870s through his final years, with half of the exhibition devoted to Gauguin’s work in Tahiti and the Marquesas Islands. 

Paul Gauguin, Madam Roulin, 1888, oil on canvas, Saint Louis Art Museum.

Gauguin in the World includes 150 works of art drawn from 65 public and private collections worldwide, including: Musée d’Orsay, Paris; National Galleries of Scotland; National Gallery of Art, Washington; Philadelphia Museum of Art; Cleveland Museum of Art; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Louvre Abu Dhabi; the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; National Museum of Western Art, Tokyo; and the Musée de Tahiti et des îles, which is lending both their Gauguins and important 19th-century Marquesan sculptural works. 

Paul Gauguin, Bonjour, Monsieur Gauguin, 1889, oil on canvas and panel, The Armand Hammer Collection, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles

Paul Gauguin, The swineherd, 1888, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, gift of Lucille Ellis Simon and family in honour of the museum’s 25th anniversary © Museum Associates/Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Paul Gauguin, Still life with Hope, 1901, private collection, Milan © Paolo Vandrasch

About Paul Gauguin 
Gauguin was born June 7, 1848, to a French father, a radical journalist; and French mother of Peruvian heritage. In 1851, the family left Paris following the 1848 revolutions, destined for Peru and his mother’s family there. Gauguin’s father died on the voyage. Gauguin and his sister were raised by their widowed mother in Lima, initially, then France, in Orleans and Paris. Educated at boarding schools in Orleans, Gauguin enlisted at 17 as a pilot’s assistant in the merchant marine to satisfy his military service; he then joined the French navy. After a half-dozen years at sea, he returned to Paris. At 23, he secured a stock-broker job at the French Bourse, later marrying a Danish woman and fathering five children. Financially secure and interested in art, he entered the art world as a collector and patron. After meeting Camille Pissarro in 1874, the year of the first Impressionist exhibition, the two struck up a mentor/tutor relationship, and Gauguin began to paint in his spare time. He would submit to the Impressionist exhibitions over the next eight years but achieved little success as an artist. After the collapse of the French stock market in 1882, with his income now lost, Gauguin moved his family from Paris, first to Rouen and then to Copenhagen, where his wife was able to find work. There, Gauguin had a brief, unsuccessful stint as a carpet salesman. Frustrated by his lack of artistic success, Gauguin decided to escape Europe and make a voyage to French Polynesia, where he lived and resumed painting. He returned to Paris in 1893. Two years later, disillusioned by his failed attempts to succeed as an artist, he left France, and his family, for good, and settled in French Polynesia, ultimately at Hiva Oa in the Marquesas. Following years of deteriorating health, Gauguin died on May 8, 1903, at 54. 

Organization 
This exhibition is organized by Art Exhibitions Australia; National Gallery of Australia, Canberra; and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.

Catalogue 

A fully illustrated catalogue will accompany the exhibition. Edited by exhibition curator Henri Loyrette and featuring his major new essay on Gauguin, the publication will include contributions from Miriama Bono, Norma Broude, Vaiana Giraud, and Nicholas Thomas. 

• Miriama Bono, architect, painter, and director of the Musée de Tahiti et des îles, discusses Gauguin’s work in the context of the Pacific. Her essay views the exhibition as “an occasion for interrogating the posterity of Gauguin’s work among the Pacific populations, and more particularly for Tahitians and Marquesans.”  
• Norma Broude, feminist scholar and specialist in 19th-century French and Italian paintings, encourages an assessment of Gauguin in the context of the legacy of his maternal grandmother, a pioneering feminist and socialist activist, one that “will allow us to recognize the ways in which Flora Tristan’s grandson and his art were positively shaped by his family history and the evolving feminisms of his own era.”  
• Viviana Giraud, longtime official at the Maison de la Culture in Papeete, Tahiti, addresses Gauguin as a writer. “Gauguin’s writings are the least familiar part of his corpus; some were lost, some remained unpublished, and others were misunderstood or ignored. They deserve attention.”  
• Henri Loyrette, former director, Musée d’Orsay and Musée du Louvre, looks back over Gauguin’s life, work, and friendships from the vantage point of the artist’s last, ailing years in the Marquesas, weaving in and out of those key narratives to evoke Gauguin’s own experience: “Gauguin in 1902 in the Marquesas scrolls through his entire life in brief and disordered sequences, like so many freeze frames.” 
• Nicholas Thomas, Australian anthropologist and director of the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology in Cambridge, England, explores the stubbornly irreconcilable facets of Gauguin’s work, from the premise that “paradoxically his art is not well known: Its heterogeneity and complexity have been obscured by the notoriety of the biography.”

Harmony and Dissonance: Orphism in Paris, 1910–1930

 Guggenheim Museum

November 8, 2024–March 9, 2025

Video: Harmony & Dissonance” at the Guggenheim

Featuring over 90 artworks to be presented in the museum’s iconic rotunda, this major exhibition will examine the vibrant abstract art of Orphism. It will explore the transnational movement’s developments in Paris, addressing the impact dance, music, and poetry had on the art, among other themes.

Orphism emerged in the early 1910s, when the innovations brought about by modern life were radically altering conceptions of time and space. Artists connected to Orphism engaged with ideas of simultaneity in kaleidoscopic compositions, investigating the transformative possibilities of color, form, and motion. Selected works by artists including Robert Delaunay, Sonia Delaunay, Marcel Duchamp, Mainie Jellett, František Kupka, Francis Picabia, and Amadeo de Souza-Cardoso, and by the Synchromists Stanton Macdonald-Wright and Morgan Russell, will be on view.

Harmony and Dissonance: Orphism in Paris, 1910–1930 is organized by Tracey Bashkoff, Senior Director of Collections and Senior Curator, and Vivien Greene, Senior Curator, 19th- and Early 20th-Century Art, with the support of Bellara Huang, Curatorial Assistant, Exhibitions.

IMAGES

Marc Chagall, Homage to Apollinaire (Hommage à Apollinaire), 1913. Oil on canvas, 78 7/8 × 74 5/8 in. (200.4 × 189.5 cm). Collection Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, The Netherlands, with support of Vereniging Rembrandt. © 2024 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris. Photo: Peter Cox, Collection Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven

Robert Delaunay, Red Eiffel Tower (La Tour rouge), 1911–12. Oil on canvas, 49 1/4 × 35 3/8 (125 × 90.3 cm). Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, Solomon R. Guggenheim Founding Collection 46.1036. Photo: Midge Wattles, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York

Albert Gleizes, On Brooklyn Bridge (Sur Brooklyn Bridge), 1917. Oil on canvas, 63 3/4 × 51 in. (161.8 × 129.5 cm). Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, Solomon R. Guggenheim Founding Collection 37.489. © Estate of Albert Gleizes / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris. Photo: Ariel Ione Williams, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York

Mainie Jellett, Painting, 1938. Oil on canvas, 29 15/16 × 25 7/16 in. (76 × 64.6 cm). National Museums NI, Ulster Museum Collection, Northern Ireland, Donated by the Thomas Haverty Trust. Photo: National Museums NI

František Kupka, Disks of Newton (Study for “Fugue in Two Colors”) (Disques de Newton [Étude pour “La fugue à 2 couleurs”]),1912. Oil on canvas, 39 1/2 × 29 in. (100.3 × 73.7 cm). The Philadelphia Museum of Art: The Louise and Walter Arensberg Collection, 1950 © 2024 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris. Photo: The Philadelphia Museum of Art

Francis Picabia, Edtaonisl (Ecclesiastic) (Edtaonisl [Ecclésiastique]), 1913. Oil on canvas, 118 × 118 in. (299.7 × 299.7 cm). The Art Institute of Chicago, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Armand Bartos, 1953. © 2024 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris. Photo: The Art Institute of Chicago / Art Resource, NY

Siena: The Rise of Painting, 1300–1350

 Metropolitan Museum of Art

October 13, 2024–January 26, 2025

National Gallery, London

March 8 through June 22, 2025

Featuring more than 100 paintings, sculptures, metalworks, and textiles, Siena: The Rise of Painting, 1300–1350 will reunite works by some of the greatest Italian painters of the 14th century

This fall, The Metropolitan Museum of Art will present the first major exhibition in the United States focusing on early Sienese painting. Siena: The Rise of Painting, 1300–1350 will examine an exceptional moment at the dawn of the Italian Renaissance and the pivotal role of Sienese artists—including Duccio, Pietro and Ambrogio Lorenzetti, and Simone Martini—in defining Western painting. In the decades leading up to the catastrophic onset of the plague around 1350, Siena was the site of phenomenal artistic innovation and activity. While Florence is often positioned as the center of the Renaissance, this presentation will offer a fresh perspective on the importance of Siena, from Duccio’s profound influence on a new generation of painters to the development of narrative altarpieces and the dissemination of artistic styles beyond Italy. The exhibition will be on view October 13, 2024, through January 26, 2025.

The exhibition is made possible by the Sherman Fairchild Foundation, Alice Cary Brown and W.L. Lyons Brown, the Gail and Parker Gilbert Fund, and the Diane W. and James E. Burke Fund.

Additional support is provided by Laura and John Arnold, a gift in memory of Regina Jaglom Wachter, The Huo Family Foundation, The Richard and Natalie Jacoff Foundation, Inc., the Robert Lehman Foundation, Trevor and Alexis Traina, the Malcolm Hewitt Wiener Foundation, and the Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation.

This exhibition is supported by an indemnity from the Federal Council on the Arts and the Humanities.

The exhibition is organized by The Metropolitan Museum of Art and The National Gallery, London.
 
“Siena was an epicenter of artistic innovation and ambition in the 14th and 15th century. Its impact on the development of European art and on the development of painting cannot be emphasized enough,” said Max Hollein, The Met’s Marina Kellen French Director and Chief Executive Officer. “This monumental exhibition will bring together the most important group of early Sienese paintings ever assembled outside of Siena—offering a once-in-a-lifetime chance to explore the influence of this extraordinary artistic center.”

Stephan Wolohojian, John Pope-Hennessy Curator in Charge of European Paintings at The Met, said, “The distinctive artistic language of Duccio, the Lorenzetti brothers, Simone Martini, and their contemporaries completely recast the course of European painting. Examining the bold work of these Sienese artists allows us to trace the germination of many of the key ideas that preoccupied artists working in Italy in the following centuries.”

Drawing on the outstanding collections of The Met and the National Gallery, London, and including rare loans from dozens of other international lenders, the exhibition will highlight more than 100 works by a remarkable group of Sienese artists. It will feature paintings alongside sculptures, metalwork, and textiles, ranging from large works made for public display to intimate objects created for private devotion. Highlights will include Duccio’s Stoclet Madonna, Ambrogio Lorenzetti’s Annunciation, and historic reunifications of major pictorial ensembles, such as the back predella of Duccio’s Maestà and Simone Martini’s Orsini Polyptych. Although none of these painters survived the plague of about 1350, their achievements had an immeasurable impact on painters and theorists in the centuries that followed.

Exhibition Overview
The exhibition is presented in 12 sections that broadly explore themes of geography and travel, artists and artistic personalities, and the reframing of painting to establish Siena as a major hub of artistic, economic, political, and religious activity before the Renaissance. It reunites elements of whole works that have been separated for centuries, resurrecting complete artistic visions that have been fragmented for the duration of the modern era. In bringing together these and other extant works that attest to a singular, fleeting moment in the history of European art, the exhibition illuminates the story of a thriving cultural center at the forefront of artistic innovation and achievement before most of its citizens, artists included, perished in the plague at mid-century.

The Met’s own Stoclet Madonna, one of the rare independent works by Duccio in America, is placed at the start of the exhibition, introducing the presentation to visitors and inviting them to explore key themes. In the first half of the 1300s, Sienese artists, especially painters, transformed the city, pushing their art to its limits to create large decorative schemes for its civic and religious buildings, while at the same time producing refined small-scale paintings that were collected and celebrated far outside the city walls. Despite the profusion of artistic output, this extraordinary chapter in the history of European art is known from only a small number of surviving works connected by a complex network of confluences. Notable among these remaining works, the Stoclet Madonna embodies the artist’s ability to synthesize different traditions and recast them in a new way within the frame of a painting. As Siena’s premier painter, Duccio received commissions for numerous devotional objects in both private and civic contexts.

Chief among Duccio’s commissioned works is the high altar of Siena’s cathedral, a large-scale image of the Virgin Mary enthroned known as the Maestà. This enormous double-sided painting, nearly 16 by 15 feet, was an ambitious undertaking that took five years to complete. The Maestà remained on the altar until 1506, when it was partially dismantled and later dismembered. Over the centuries, some fragments were lost while others were sold. This exhibition is the first time in centuries that the elements of the back predella are being seen together.

Another section explores the impact of Siena’s position as a major stop on the Via Francigena, a historic route that stretched from Naples and Rome to Paris and Canterbury in northern Europe. This highly traveled route generated an international traffic of people, ideas, and objects—including ivories, enamels, and textiles—through Siena, while also facilitating the dissemination of works by Sienese artists. 

Multipaneled paintings known as polyptychs were the most common form of altarpiece in the decades after Duccio completed the Maestà. Composed of independent panels, they could be painted in pieces and later assembled. One of Pietro Lorenzetti’s great altarpieces, his monumental Pieve Altarpiece, commissioned in 1320 for a church in Arezzo, has never before traveled from the setting for which it was painted, making this its first time in an exhibition.  

Siena’s connections with Mediterranean trade networks made it a key market for the circulation of luxury items produced by highly skilled weavers in Iran and northern China. These extraordinary cloths, woven with vibrantly colored threads and gold, were admired by Sienese artists, who, seeking to emulate their shimmering surfaces, carefully worked their motifs into their paintings.

Sienese painters were renowned for making some of the most refined and extraordinary works for private devotion. Highly prized by their patrons, they could be easily transported and are often recorded in inventories far from Siena. One exhibition section highlights the work of Simone Martini, Ambrogio Lorenzetti, and Pietro Lorenzetti, showcasing their different narrative and pictorial strategies. A major group of works are the reunited elements of Simone Martini’s masterpiece, the so-called Orsini Polyptych. One of the most complex and sumptuous portable devotional images of early Italian painting, this complex work was a great influence on painters in Northern Europe.

The exhibition also examines the work of Pietro and Ambrogio Lorenzetti through their interest in narrative. The Lorenzetti brothers worked on projects both separately and together. Each contributed to a landmark series of altarpieces with scenes from the life of the Virgin that were painted as part of a larger program for Siena’s cathedral. These collective works placed narrative subjects at the center of the altarpiece, reframing the possibilities offered by the picture field. The exhibition includes both monumental works and detailed, smaller-scale narrative scenes. 

Another section juxtaposes sculpture and painting to highlight the rivalry and mutual exchange between artists working in these two genres. The models presented by Siena’s great sculptors at the beginning of the 14th century prompted painters to explore greater dimensionality and weight in their compositions. Decades later, Tino di Camaino, perhaps the most significant and innovative sculptor of his generation, responded to painters, adapting their visual forms and strategies to engage viewers. 

The exhibition concludes by reflecting on Simone Martini’s output in the 1330s, when, at the height of his career, he abandoned his successful practice in Siena and moved to Avignon, where he produced frescoes for the church of Notre-¬Dame des Doms and a major altarpiece for the Franciscan church. Much admired by members of the papal curia who were based there and by the humanist Petrarch, Sienese art planted the seed for a new type of painting north of the Alps, flowering in the courts of Bohemia and, later, Burgundy, as well as in other artistic centers throughout northern Europe.

Credits and Related Content
Siena: The Rise of Painting, 1300–1350 is curated by Stephan Wolohojian, John Pope-Hennessy Curator in Charge of European Paintings at The Met; Laura Llewellyn, Curator of Italian Paintings before 1500 at the National Gallery, London; and Caroline Campbell, Director of the National Gallery of Ireland; in collaboration with Joanna Cannon, Professor at the Courtauld Institute of Art.

Following the exhibition's debut at The Met, it will be on view at The National Gallery, London, from March 8 through June 22, 2025.

A fully illustrated catalogue will accompany the exhibition and be available for purchase from The Met Store. Published by The National Gallery, London, the catalogue features new scholarship, with chapters exploring masterpieces by four of Siena’s most illustrious painters—Duccio, Simone Martini, and Ambrogio and Pietro Lorenzetti. 

This book explores a crucial turning point in Italian art when the prestige of painting reached new heights. Siena became the centre of a rich exchange of ideas, as painters took inspiration from marble and ivory sculptures, intricate metalwork, and precious imported silks to enhance the power of their work. Travelling beyond their native city, Sienese artists made their mark across Italy and into northern Europe.

Beautifully illustrated and featuring important new scholarship, chapters explore masterpieces by four of Siena’s most illustrious painters—Duccio, Simone Martini, and Ambrogio and Pietro Lorenzetti—alongside objects in other media and from other countries and cultures, encouraging fresh perspectives and dialogues between these groundbreaking works/

Images

“Madonna del Latte” (ca. 1325), by Ambrogio Lorenzetti.Art work by Ambrogio Lorenzetti / Picture Art Collection / Alamy

“The Crucifixion; the Redeemer with Angels; Saint Nicholas; Saint Clement” (ca. 1311-18), by Duccio.Art work by Duccio Di Buoninsegna / Courtesy Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Installation view of Siena: The Rise of Painting, 1300 ~ 1350, on view October 13, 2024 ~ January 26, 2025 at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Photo by Eileen Travel. Courtesy of The Met.

“The Raising of Lazarus” (1310-11), by Duccio di Buoninsegna.Art work by Duccio di Buoninsegna /

Courtesy Kimbell Art Museum