Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Arriving in Siena in \u201cwhite moonshine\u201d in 1873, Henry James stood in the horseshoe-shaped piazza, surveyed the \u201ccrenellated palace from whose overhanging cornice a tall, straight tower springs up with a movement as light as that of a single plume in the bonnet of a captain\u201d, and enjoyed \u201chalf-an-hour\u2019s infinite vision of medieval Italy\u201d. He imagined the houses talking: \u201cwe are very old and a trifle weary, but we were built strong and piled high, and we shall last for many an age. The present is cold and heedless, but we keep ourselves in heart by brooding over our store of memories and traditions.\u201dTheir moment has come. The present is warmly attentive: Siena: The Rise of Painting, 1300-1350 opens at London\u2019s National Gallery on March 8 after high success at New York\u2019s Metropolitan Museum. Uniting works \u2014 and altarpieces \u2014 unseen together for hundreds of years, and unlikely to be under the same roof again, the exhibition proposes 14th-century Siena as a dawn of the Renaissance: distinctive for the beauty, material splendour and refined delicacy of its paintings, sculptures and decorative objects, significant for its impact.It especially celebrates four painters, beginning with Duccio, the tempera master who absorbed Byzantine hieraticism into a lively, harmoniously coloured, expressive style. As Duccio\u2019s angel Gabriel, back foot lifted, pink-gold wing billowing, strides into Mary\u2019s courtyard,\u00a0the National Gallery\u2019s \u201cAnnunciation\u201d (1308-11) announces the coming of a new art as well as a religion.Duccio\u2019s followers were the inventive Simone Martini \u2014 \u201cChrist discovered in the Temple\u201d (1342) features a sulky teen who thinks he is God, confronted by a reproving dad, grabbing his shoulder, and an uneasy placating mum \u2014 and the Lorenzetti brothers:\u00a0mercurial Ambrogio of the weird, affectionate guzzling baby and nursing mother \u201cMadonna of the Milk\u201d (c1325); calmer Pietro.Among monumental loans are Ambrogio\u2019s St Nicholas cycle \u2014 in \u201cSaint Nicholas and the Grain Ships\u201d (1332-34), vivid blue angels send grain streaming down from celestial sacks \u2014 and Pietro\u2019s opulent three-metre \u201cTarlati Polyptych\u201d (1320). Here sculpturally solid saints in niches and pinnacles, like the statues rising up the facade of Siena Cathedral, surround the Virgin in fur-lined brocade, mink tails dangling.\u00a0The luxurious surfaces portray Sienese precious fabrics, glassware, goldwork, all displayed in the exhibition.How did a small Tuscan town, overshadowed and threatened by rival Florence, flourish so superbly? And why was its glory overlooked for so long?\u00a0Medieval Siena was a banking centre, thriving from its position on via Francigena, the pilgrim route to Rome. That brought prosperity and cultural influx \u2014 Duccio shares some sensibility with courtly Parisian illuminated manuscripts and small, heartfelt ivories.Politically, the city was proudly independent: a republic from 1125, with a university from 1240, Siena vanquished Florence in the Battle of Montaperti (1260). An artistic golden age ensued under \u201cThe Nine\u201d, a government chosen every two months from merchant and noble families. One official was employed solely to recite Dante. Money flowed for buildings and their adornments. Ambrogio\u2019s frescoes lined Palazzo Pubblico. Even Florentine Giorgio Vasari called Siena Cathedral\u2019s marble mosaic floor \u201cthe most magnificent ever made\u201d.\u00a0\u00a0By the time Vasari wrote, catastrophe had struck: in 1348 plague killed half Siena\u2019s population, including the Lorenzettis; in 1555 it capitulated finally to Florence. Vasari\u2019s Florence-dominated Lives of the Artists, the victor\u2019s account, held long sway. The Louvre never acquired a Duccio. EH Gombrich\u2019s The Story of Art gives Florentine pioneer Giotto seven pages; Duccio gets a paragraph, without illustration.\u00a0Things changed in the 21st century. As art history swerved from a single highway to seek plural modernisms, so multiple, or nuanced, Renaissances looked possible. In 2004 the Met bought its only Duccio, a tiny \u201cMadonna and Child\u201d (1290-1300), for around $45mn \u2014 its most expensive purchase. \u201cThe first slide in an art history 101 course is a Duccio,\u201d then-director Philippe de Montebello declared.Duccio\u2019s gold-soaked ground and Virgin gazing sorrowfully at the baby she cradles follow eastern icons, but Byzantine rigidity disappears. Christ is no longer static, frontal: instead a chubby-fingered infant tugs his mother\u2019s veil. That free-flowing veil is itself an innovation, a small drama of movement, undulating across face and neck.\u00a0The scene comes to life although Duccio stylises elegantly \u2014 his slanting eyes and rosebud mouths characterise Sienese faces \u2014 and plays on artifice. He places the figures behind a marble balustrade:\u00a0 the first illusionistic parapet in European art, repeated by painters through the Renaissance inviting us into their fictive worlds.\u00a0If Duccio\u2019s \u201cMadonna\u201d, fluid yet rhythmic, serene yet emotionally intense, distils his world in miniature, his flabbergasting\u00a060-part \u201cMaest\u00e0\u201d, a double-sided altarpiece, the largest known when it was carried in a procession to Siena cathedral in 1311, is his art\u2019s summation.\u00a0\u00a0The main front panel, a gigantic Madonna whose broad midnight blue mantle spreads against a cream and gold throne, framed by flickering saints haloed in intricate tooled gold, never leaves Siena\u2019s Duomo museum. The altarpiece was dismantled in 1771, and many panels, including London\u2019s \u201cAnnunciation\u201d, dispersed. The first reassembly since then of eight surviving back predella paintings chronicling Christ\u2019s youth will be an exhibition highlight.Together, they display Duccio\u2019s storytelling gift, how he represented Siena\u2019s architecture both to give biblical scenes immediacy and to unify diverse panels into patterned grandeur. Terracotta roofs, pink and white turreted towers, arches, loggias,\u00a0star alongside the figures in the \u201cTemptations\u201d of the devil in the temple and mountains, in \u201cChrist and the Woman of Samaria\u201d and \u201cThe Healing of the Man born Blind\u201d.\u00a0The sense is of Siena self-contained, self-referential. Painting so embedded in its culture is one reason why, compared to today\u2019s homogenising trends, we find the Sienese Renaissance attractive.\u00a0Yet in a final triumph, Sienese painting did travel and expand, helping shape the graceful sinuous 14th-15th-century international gothic style, when Martini in 1333 took his version of Duccio\u2019s narrative lyricism \u2014 more intensely atmospheric, figures further individualised \u2014 to Avignon\u2019s papal court.\u00a0His \u201cOrsini Polyptych\u201d was probably made there. Another rare reconstruction \u2014 eight book-size panels from Paris, Antwerp and Berlin suggest Martini\u2019s sphere of influence \u2014 it demonstrates tremendous condensed emotional range. One side unfolds Christ\u2019s Passion: harrowing grief in a flame-red Mary Magdalene clutching the cross, an orange night sky illuminating chaotic mourners. On the other Gabriel in diaphanous gold flutters in, at once ethereal and a majestic presence. A softly delineated, horrified Mary shrinks into her elaborate throne.We are 20 years from Duccio\u2019s Annunciation, to which Martini is indebted yet leaves behind for an almost fabular realism, and stronger dynamism. On the catalogue cover Martini\u2019s golden angel presses forward, suggesting Sienese painting pushing ahead, outward. It has taken seven centuries for its achievement to be fully recognised; this exhibition will be one of the year\u2019s wonders.March 8-June 22, nationalgallery.org.uk<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Arriving in Siena in \u201cwhite moonshine\u201d in 1873, Henry James stood in the horseshoe-shaped piazza, surveyed the \u201ccrenellated palace from whose overhanging cornice a tall, straight tower springs up with a movement as light as that of a single plume in the bonnet of<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":227414,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-227413","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-culture"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/227413","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=227413"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/227413\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":227415,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/227413\/revisions\/227415"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/227414"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=227413"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=227413"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=227413"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}