Siena

 Siena: The Rise of Painting, 1300 ‒1350

Siena Cathedral

The National Gallery in London is currently inviting us to:

Step into Siena. It’s the beginning of the 14th century in central Italy. A golden moment for art, a catalyst of change. Artists Duccio, Simone Martini and the brothers Pietro and Ambrogio Lorenzetti are forging a new way of painting.....

Il Palazzo Pubblico, Siena

And it is a stunning exhibition:

Duccio:  The Virgin and Child Enthroned with Angels

Little is known about Duccio di Buoninsegna, the greatest painter of the Sienese school, who was active from 1278 to 1318. His masterpiece is the Maestà, a double-sided altarpiece created between 1308 and 1311.  

The whole piece was about five metres high and five metres wide and it has a wide central panel with the Virgin and Child adored by the patrons of Siena and surrounded by saints and angels, all created with tempera and gold leaf. The main panel and the bulk of the narrative scenes are now in the Museo dell’Opera Metropolitana, Piazza del Duomo, Siena.

Duccio was probably assisted in this work by his pupil Simone Martini (c 1284 - 1344) who did several frescos in the Palazzo Pubblico in Siena, among other works, and Pietro Lorenzetti, who painted this Polyptych in 1320:

And his brother Ambrogio, who painted this Annunciation in 1344, with Gabriel and Mary's words tooled into the gold leaf:

The exhibition has been organised by the National Gallery and The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York and contains over a hundred exhibits made by artisans working in Siena, Naples, Avignon and beyond, and is open until the 22nd of June.

The Marriage of the Virgin 
Niccolò di Buonaccorso (active 1355 - 1388)

So, with minds full of golds and blues, we leave the exhibition and walk out along the avenue at Middelharnis....

The Avenue at Middelharnis - Meindert Hobbema (1689)

Into Hyde park, where the blue pedalos are out on the Serpentine:

Homeward 2020 - Arpita Singh

Under the blues and golds of the Serpentine Pavilion 2025,

A Capsule in Time
Marina Tabassum

And in the Serpentine South Gallery in Kensington Gardens, Giuseppe Penone  is showing Thoughts in the Roots, with a golden  representation of a respiratory system in a room lined with laurel leaves.  More Italy; more gold....

Respirare L'Ombra (To Breathe the Shadow)
Giuseppe Penone (Garessio, Italy, 1947 - )

While outside, we walk by three life-size bronze trees, one of them shattered by lightning to reveal its golden heart:

Albero folgorato (Thunderstruck Tree) 2012
Giuseppe Penone

The sun begins to slip away, golden against the lapis lazuli blue of sky and Serpentine, Sienese colours at their best,

And Albert sits quietly under his angels, golden against the fading blue,

The Albert Memorial

I take refuge in my lodging, which glows with gold,

To dream of darkling Siena in my golden slumber.

San Domenico, Siena

Inside this northern summer's fold

The fields are full of naked gold,

Broadcast from heaven on lands it loves;

The green veiled air is full of doves;

Soft leaves that sift the sunbeams let

Light on the small warm grasses wet

Fall in short broken kisses sweet,

And break again like waves that beat

Round the sun's feet.

Algernon Charles Swinburne

Siena

A Group of Four Poor Clares
Ambrogio Lorenzetti (c 1325)

My favourite place; I look forward to returning:

Il Duomo di Siena

Looking back....

Janus, the spirit of comings and goings.....

In these dark northern days, shortness of sky, lack of light, prevalence of precipitation..... abundance of alliteration....

We are in the jaws of Janus: Arches/doorways/beginnings/endings.....

I have been reviewing pictures of the past. And, with the utmost respect to Janus's duplicitous features, I look back with both affection and trepidation. I love the past, but I fear it too. I cannot live there. The shades pursue me.

But it can be a wonderful world, while I must also look to the future....

Without prejudice, and without politics, I have chosen pictures here that reflect my love for Italy, and the life that, for well over twenty years, I spent in that complex and benighted land.

Of course there is no right way, nor wrong way, to portray a country that did not exist c150 years ago,  but whose geography has bound it together through the years, and whose notional history has fried itself into the collective minds of those who don't, like me, have the right to comment....

My personal relationship with Italy is inevitably (though not exclusively) linked to the delightful woman (Amanda) who for more than forty years put up with me....  Who danced in the Via dei Fori Imperiale and anywhere there was music; who shared everything and everywhere.....  Mussolini could not have deterred her.  We loved it all....  

For many years we lived on the shores of Lake Bracciano:

In the village of Trevignano Romano:

But initially, I lived in Trastevere, close by Santa Maria:

And the city of Rome, my home for years, is manageable, so long as you take it in your stride:

Or stand back a little:

Or look at it askance:

Or admire its viscera:

I love the ingenuity of this world.  Here a Muse rests her immortal chin on her knuckle within a now defunct power station. How many centuries separate past and present is not the issue.  The extraordinary continuum is what takes my breath away....

And then, not far away, a relatively forgotten stone recalls the horrors that hardly a lifetime ago deprived Rome of all dignity or humanity.  The history of Rome is, like so many other histories, full of infamy, stained with blood and pain. Ignominy is so often the middle name of rulers.....

A memorial to a now contested incident - though it represents a period when many uncontested executions were certainly carried out......

But, burying my head in the mud, I love Italy.  So much of my life unravelled within the highs and lows of this beautiful part of the world.  So many nights playing hoopla in Trajan's Forum:

So many nights wandering home through dark streets near dawn, pretending to be Marcello Mastroianni, or blowing imaginary kisses to Anna Magnani.....

But Italy is not Rome.  Look at Pisa, by day:

Or by night:

Admire the profile of Monte Amiata under restless skies:

Or spend an evening as the full moon rises over San Gimignano:

Relax by, and swim in the effervescent waters of Lago di Vico:

Or savour the salt, swim with the fish, dine on spaghetti alle vongole at Santa Severa:

Don't let's worry about the monsters:

Think about the joys of the Nile - or anywhere....

Sing along with Verdi:

Tap your feet to the local band:

Have an aperitivo overlooking the Campo in Siena:

Or a small carafe of wine:

Or, if the mood takes you, a jug of something local (Grazie, Antonio):

Share an al fresco lunch with friends (Grazie, Gino):

Pay your respects to the Etruscans:

Check out the heart of Lucca:

Or the arts of Subiaco:

Breathe the sun going down over the sea:

Or scent the darkness over Tuscan hills, an evening confusion of rosemary with fig, helichrysum italicum with ginestra..... while a wood fire toasts fegatelli on the grill.  Oh.....

I watch the nuns of Santa Brigida fade, giggling, into the night in Farfa:

I sleep in the bed where Verdi was born:

I don the clothes of a cloistered monk to dead-head my roses:

I park where I like:

I will take confession (if that is what you wish...)

And I will give you a ride on my shiny shoed horse, if you will inform on your best friend:

And I will show you the tomb where America buried Italy, if you will follow me:

Yes.  Look at me looking at myself, but not knowing what I see (Grazie, Caravaggio).....

Italy has always been an enigma, and will continue to be a prickly pear, a fruit with beauty enclosed in a difficult skin.  Persist and you will be rewarded.  Shy back and you will miss the joy.

All relationships have their highlights and their shadows.  Here Amanda poses in the doorway of a pizzeria that, having been a stable and then a garage, was moulded into a successful bar in the Suburra by friends who accepted me into a short-lived partnership, which could have changed our lives.....  [Another story?  Ed]

Ah.  yes.  All those years ago.....  And this is Lago di Bracciano, by which we lived, and where Amanda rests now, swimming, smiling in her sleep at all this nostalgia:

We are in January, remembering the Roman god who looked both ways, back and forward.  It is our destiny to be consumed by our past and to fret about our future, but Janus teaches us to be calm and to take it in our stride.  His expressions are neither fraught nor discomfited.  Ahead and behind are essentially the same - just two aspects that combine to make one whole.

Dance on my little one: