Siena: The Rise of Painting 1300-1350

When I received the press package from the Metropolitan Museum for “Siena:
The Rise of Painting 1300-1350. I immediately regretted not being able to get to New York to see it. For those who are or will be in New York, it opened October 13, 2024, and runs until January 26, 2025. The reviews since confirm my reaction.

According to Director, Max Hollein’s introduction to the catalog, “Siena was an epicenter of artistic innovation and ambition in the 14th and 15th century. Its impact on the development of European art and the development of painting cannot be emphasized enough.” Siena was also situated on a major route from Northern Europe to Rome and on to Naples and hence was a major artistic influence.

During the first half of the 14th century Siena became a hotbed of creativity, that is, until half the population of Siena perished in the plague of 1355.

The exhibition includes paintings by four of the greatest artists of their time. Duccio di Buoninsegna (1278-1319), Simone Martini (1284-1344) and the brothers Pietro Lorenzetti (1280-1348) and Ambrogio Lorenzetti (1290-1348). Though the Press Release emphasizes the Paintings, the over 300 page catalogue indicates categories including Sculpture, Goldsmiths’ Work, Illuminated Manuscripts and Textiles from over 40 lenders from at least 10 countries. With over a hundred works in the exhibition and most of them stellar examples, it is impossible to do full justice to the exhibition here.

Since, for better or for worse, we have a pecking order for categories let us start with a couple of paintings. The Frick Collection, just half a mile away, lent their wonderful Duccio of the “Temptation of Christ” to the show, but this is a show with more than one Duccio! The exhibition created in conjunction with the National Gallery in London, lent this small tryptic by the artist representing The Virgin and Child with Saints Dominic and Aurea, and Patriarchs and Prophets (ca. 1312-15). The first image is the picture from the Frick and the second from the National Gallery.

These four small panels by Simone Martini form the Orsini Polyptych (ca. 1335-1340) that are today split between the Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten in Antwerp, the Louvre in Paris and the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin are reunited here. Each panel is painted on both sides. This one is my first choice, “Going to Calvary,” with Jerusalem depicted as a medieval city. The building has a central plan symbolizing the temple of Jerusalem. I love the individual faces where you can imagine what they are all thinking. Imagine these panels hinged and folded together so as to be portable for private devotion. A second illustration shows them installed at the Metropolitan.

A few fragments survive of a great wooden crucifix created by Lando di Pietro as a personal gift to a Sienna confraternity. The nearly life-size crucifix was all but destroyed in an Allied bombing of the Basilica di San Bernardino all’Osservanza in 1944. Exhibited in the show, a damaged head of Christ in polychromed wood was lent by the Museo Castelli in Siena. It was only through the destruction of the rest of this work that parchments secreted in its fragments were discovered, revealing its author, who had previously been known only as a goldsmith and architect, was a sculptor as well!

There are several amazing ivory pieces in the show. This Tabernacle Polyptych of the Virgin and Child and scenes from the infancy of Christ created in the 1280s in Paris is a great example, lent by the Toledo Museum of Art in Ohio. Some of the original polychrome and gilding remains. It too could be folded and taken along for private worship … today we carry our computers!

Oh, so many more riches to view but I am going to leave it at that. Hopefully, I have given you a taste of this artistic caviar.

Now, I have a surprise for you. The Met created a video tour of the exhibition with the curators responsible for putting it together and others who were involved with putting it on. The accent is on the paintings but some of the objects are visible along the way.

An Unfortunate Comparison

For those who have not voted early, within the next couple of weeks you will cast a vote that will affect our lives and possibly change our country irrevocably. Unfortunately, we seem to be taking history far less seriously in our schools. If it is seriously taught it is only U.S. history and, as we have heard, may only be history that will not upset our children. This leaves those on social media to teach whatever they want without fear of contradiction.

A well-educated friend recently told me that he did not understand the reference I made to how recent times in the U.S.A. mirrored what happened in the 1930s in Germany. I have a different background since I am Jewish and the product of German parents who had to leave the country they loved. I am writing what I could not have as of 1933 in Germany. My father was thrown out of university in that year. Every word I write below can be fully documented but if I included all the details this Missive would go on for many pages.

Here are a few examples of parallels that concern me. The Reichstag Fire,1933, a few weeks after Hitler became Chancellor, was used as an excuse to abolish a number of constitutional protections and this paved the way for Nazi dictatorship. In the U.S. right-wing protesters stormed the Capitol and looked to hang those they said were taking over the government because of what they saw as a crooked election.

In the same year, 1933, university students in Munich started the Book Burning. In the U.S. we don’t burn the books; we ban them by taking them off library shelves at schools and public libraries denying our students education in many areas including the history of our own country.

Hitler called for a nation of a pure Aryan race. In the U.S. there are calls for a Christian Nation. From day one Hitler worked to expel those who did not fit into the Nazi concept of a master race. While mainly about Jews, according to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, a few of the others that were to be expelled one way or the other were Black people, Gay men, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and people with disabilities.

CNN reported regarding the 2024 race that Trump said of immigrants: “They’re poisoning the blood of our Country”. The former President also has said he wants to create “camps” where all immigrants should be kept until they can be sent out of the country. Starting in 1933, long before his use of the ovens for the “final solution”, Hitler created concentration camps for those he did not find fit or spoke against the Third Reich.

There are many examples of Trump’s contempt for the handicapped. Former Marine Corps General and one-time Trump chief of staff, John Kelly, said that Trump did not want to be photographed with military amputees because “it doesn’t look good for me.”

The Third Reich spoke of mainstream news as “Lügenpresse” (press of lies). Sound familiar? The term “fake news” comes directly from there. The former President recently has stated that he wishes CBS to lose its license because of the network’s interview of Kamala Harris, which he skipped out on. While he was still President in 2019 the New York Times wrote that he referred to it as “a true ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE!” That is fascism 101.

Hitler had his enablers who started planning already in the 1920’s. Here there is Project 25. The Fuhrer and the Maga party are in lock step in first delegitimizing existing government departments, and then forcing them to do their bidding.

In his rise to power Hitler affiliated militias with his Nazi Party, the SA (paramilitary “brown shirts”) and SS-( an elite Aryan sub-group). Trump encourages self-recruiting militias like the Proud Boys who he urged to “stand by!”.

THE CHOICE IS YOURS … VOTE LIKE YOUR LIFE DEPENDED ON IT!

Falling in Love with an Art Object

My children were out here for a birthday celebration, and we went with my daughter and her husband to Canyon Road (the street with the most galleries in Santa Fe) to look for a sculpture for their garden. Though I have been with my wife for a half-century, this search reminded me of a bronze I had bought with my first wife. That was a good memory, but I did not miss the object itself. Of course, one thought always leads to another, and it reminded me of a small painting acquired back then. I believe it was of a girl sitting by a pond, and suddenly I missed it. Why does that work and not the other?

That is what started me on this Missive. The painting was by an artist who is somewhat known, but the market value of this work would not be significant. It is a pretty picture but that’s it. So, why do I miss it? Because it was given to us by my father’s classmate from Frankfurt, who I thought of as a dear uncle.

There are lots of scientific reasons given as to why, as a species, humans love art. They all run along the same lines, more or less, and here is one example from the Farnsworth Museum in Rockland, Maine: “Why do people enjoy art? Scientific research shows that viewing art can release dopamine. This natural neurotransmitter creates a feeling of calmness and improves your overall feelings of well-being. As such, embracing art can serve as a natural pathway to alleviate stress and elevate your mood.”

On a personal level the scientific definition makes sense in terms of a certain category of art or a specific work. Many, new to the art world as well as seasoned veterans, love the Impressionists. Their works are easily accessible, and appeal to many. You can get lost in works painted in that genre. That is not what happens to me when I listen to atonal music. On the other hand, I can accept that definition when I hear folk music. For my wife, it is classical music.

I told the story at the beginning because I think what we often like about art is where it comes from or how old the object is. Would you like to own a cave painting? You may be able to draw a horse better than this one from the Lascaux caves in France estimated to be 17,000 years old. Putting it in context, however, you become in awe of it.

A great deal of the attraction of an object can be how you relate to it. Maybe a painting reminds you of your mother, your daughter, or an uncle. Then there are objects that relate to where you come from and other family members. These German Baroque gilt bronze lions were probably the feet of a clock or cabinet. Both my wife and I admire them as beautifully made imaginative creations from a historic period but for me, they are precious as they belonged to my parents.

Then there are works that relate to one’s own personal history. For instance, this Art Nouveau inkstand and the inkwell. (A removable wave crest covers the original glass inkwell.) It was part of the Art Nouveau collection we assembled over the years in our New York home. Most of it went to museums and auctions but there are always objects like this that you simply cannot part with.

Most of us buy souvenirs on a trip. You might have traveled to Kenya and bought a traditional gourd or a contemporary painting there. When you bring it home you not only enjoy the work for its own sake, but it is also a reminder of your enjoyable adventure in another world.

In a similar vein, there was a tradition in Europe of making a small purchase when an art dealer would visit another. In France that was known as “pour marqée le passage”, literally to mark the passage. It was a token of respect for the colleague whose time you took up. It was not required but often done.

In conclusion, we fall in love with a work of art in the same way we fall in love with an individual. Many factors combine to make each a different experience.

Discoveries

Everyone loves discoveries, preferably one’s own, but we can also enjoy the luck of others in the hopes that the same will happen to us. I don’t like to gamble, but a discovery is different, you were not looking to win, it just happened. What are usually called “discoveries” in the art world are misattributed works or rather works that some scholar in a specific field has researched and declares, to be by a famous artist and therefore worth further attention. More adventurous and fun is the serendipitous discovery which does not just rely on expertise but is an unexpected find.

A story that I just read, reported by Sarah Gascone on Artnet about Sally Robinson from Missouri who was interested in photo documentation of indigenous peoples. As she started to collect photos for her research, she fell in love with many of the black & white prints of Native Americans. In the process she bought photos from the granddaughter of a Santa Fe Railway advertising department employee who worked there in the 1940’s. The prints were unsigned, but she began her research and came to believe the prints were by the famed photographer, Ansel Adams. She consulted Adam’s grandson, Mathew Adams, at the Ansel Adams Gallery in Yosemite, California, who confirmed that Adams had done commercial work for the Santa Fe Railway. She believes she discovered 50 original lost prints Ansel Adams shot for the Santa Fe Railway. But their authenticity has still not been confirmed!

Another Ansel Adams saga was traced by Alan Duke for CNN in 2010. Ten years earlier Rick Norsigian bought 2 old boxes of glass negatives in a garage sale while looking for antiques. Norsigian had worked at Yosemite and recognized the scenes. He just put them under his pool table where they languished for a couple of years. Eventually he realized that some of the images were very similar to others by Ansel Adams. They were all taken in Yosemite early in Adams’ career, between 1919 and the early 1930’s. In 1937 a fire in his dark room destroyed 5,000 of his plates. Norsigian spent years researching his treasure trove and believed that Adams used the surviving plates to demonstrate stages of photography and what fire damage can do and how to improve your work when he was teaching. Experts, not only in photography but also in forensics, weather, and even an FBI agent, testified to their age and similarity to Adam’s work. He planned to tour the plates to universities and museums and had begun selling prints from the negatives when the Ansel Adams Publishing Trust sued. In the resulting settlement,   he was allowed to continue selling the prints but could not use Adams’ name or likeness. The disclaimer of authenticity that was required does mention the artist’s name!

An example of Adams’ Yosemite series

In another article for Artnet Eileen Kinsella reported another discovery, this one with a known result. When he was 11 years old, Mat Winter found an old engraving in the back of a car at a rubbish dump. He just loved the intricate detail. When he asked the owner whether he could take it she readily agreed. Even though the image was the famed Knight, Death and the Devil and was signed by Albrecht Durer and dated 1513, he doubted it had value until years later when he showed it to experts who recognized it as an original Durer engraving. Eventually, the work brought $44,800 at auction. See how important an art history education is😊?

Knight Death and the Devil with its now older savior

I have kept an article, again from Artnet that has been sitting on my desk for over a year about a teacher in Israel who took her first-grade students to Tel Azekah a site that has been said is where David met Goliath. Picking up a piece of pottery she told her students that there were ancient objects on the ground. She noticed one of her students lagging behind to show a friend something she had found. Studying it herself the teacher saw that it had the incised marks of a scarab. In Israel found antiquities are considered as belonging to the State so the child agreed to give it up and the teacher got in touch with the Antiquities Authority. Determining that it was a scarab seal 3,500 years old that demonstrated Egyptian presence in ancient times, the education director of the Authority presented the child with a certificate of appreciation. (image Scarab)

There are more reports on archeological discoveries, and it is interesting how some discoveries take a long time to come to light… like 60 years! According to a Miami Herald article by Aspen Pflughoeft dated March 11, 2024, two Norwegian brothers, one being 7 years old, went treasure hunting back in 1964. Crawling in the dirt under their local church on an island 250 miles northwest of Oslo where they found some silver coins. They did not think other than that their discovery was cool and stashed them in their treasure box. When they finally showed them to archeologists this year the coins were identified as 600-700 years old and rare. The final disposition of their discovery has not been determined.

While I was writing this, yet another discovery appeared on my screen: a possible Picasso double portrait of himself and his mistress Dora Maar. The father of the present owner found it in the cellar of a villa on the island of Capri which Picasso had in fact visited in the 1930’s. Authentication studies have begun to determine if the picture that hung for decades in this Capri family home is original.

As they say, Seek and ye shall find … possibly!