Siena by Candlelight

‘Everybody looks great at night, 
Ain't no trick to look great at night,
Everyone has a chance at night,
Leaning into the candlelight.’ (Sparks, ‘In Daylight’)  

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It’s not just the general state of the picture frame that strikes you - the crumbling fragility of the boundary of Duccio di Buoninsegna’s Madonna and Child betrays its great age, seven centuries and counting - but also the two curious indentations at the base of the work. To my left, a woman was discussing this with her exhibition companion, shedding light on what had caused the damage to this exquisite painting. She told of how its tiny size had made it the perfect focus for private devotion, and how it was in fact candlelight - two candles, to be exact - that had singed and eroded the the wood at the base of the frame. And thus, that moment of casual eavesdropping right at the start of my first visit to the National Gallery’s Siena: The Rise of Painting, 1300 ‒1350, tempered my whole experience of what I went on to see.

Duccio di Buoninsegna, Madonna and Child (1290-1300)

That most of these works are replete with gold leaf, particularly in the background, had me dreaming of swapping the gallery’s soft electric lights for the animating play of candlelight. What a privilege it would have been to see the cracked gold of Duccio’s Madonna and Child shimmer in the darkness. How might the thin, golden trim of the Virgin’s teal robe - barely perceptible until you are within a few inches of it - have flickered into fizzing life? And how heightened and moving might the expressions of the two protagonists have looked: the Virgin’s, sad with the foreknowledge of her son’s fate; the child’s, innocent and playfully unaware of the road ahead. 

This isn’t to say that these works of art disappointed. Far from it. Rather that their age, their strangeness, the occasionally grotesque anatomies of the figures that they feature - why do so many babies in early European art have the physiognomies of middle-aged men? - seemed to contain mysteries that my twenty-first century mind couldn’t come close to fathoming. Indeed, standing in front of many of these works found me searching for handholds and footholds in humour. Such as Simone Martini’s Christ Discovered in the Temple. 

Simone Martini, Christ Discovered in the Temple (1342)

There is something very universal about a child getting told off by their mum and dad, and I didn’t quite manage to stem a chuckle at the thought that Jesus had just been informed that he wasn’t going to be getting the new Nintendo Switch. 

And then, returning to Duccio and looking at the expression on Joseph’s face, who has clearly been banished from the stable in The Nativity with the Prophets and Ezekiel, there was more comedy. Sacred sobriety and seriousness might dictate that he wear a look of stoic patience. The artist is having none of that, and Joseph’s grumpiness isn’t dignified at all. 

Duccio, detail from The Nativity with the Prophets and Ezekiel (1311)

Perhaps then, the comic is sanctioned in these religious works and the artists are allowed leeway for a bit of light fun. Indeed, look again at the shut-out Joseph. Is there something here that was picked up on by Terry Gilliam and the Monty Python team? I like to think so. 

A few of the remaining panels from Duccio’s masterpiece, the Maestà, are also homing in on the piquancy of the scriptures. On the ‘Raising of Lazarus’ panel, a very green about the gills Lazarus, wrapped up almost entirely in a shroud, seems rather miffed to have been woken from eternal sleep.   

Duccio, ‘The Raising of Lazarus’, a panel from the Maestà (1311)

It’s the figure in the foreground, wearing a yellow cloak and with the hem raised to his nose to block out the stench, that brings out a smile. Lazarus’s sister Martha wasn’t wrong: “Lord, by this time he stinketh: for he hath been dead four days.” It’s these earthy details that make John’s Gospel my favourite in the Bible, a very close second to Job and his prolonged protest.

Duccio, ‘The Wedding at Cana’, a panel from the Maestà (1311)

Duccio might even be prone to embellishing the story. I love how the servants pouring the wine - and also certainly imbibing it - in ‘The Wedding at Cana’ panel wouldn’t look out of place two-hundred years down the line in Pieter Bruegel’s The Peasant’s Wedding.

Pieter Bruegel the Elder, The Peasant’s Wedding (1567)

 

This might all suggest that I’m only revelling in the lighter moments of these artworks. In which case, let me take up my candle again and focus on one painting - or rather two - that take us back to the sadder strains of these stories. Pietro Lorenzetti’s Diptych with the Virgin and Child and the Man of Sorrows is both heartbreaking and terrifying. The whole tragedy of life is contained in these two small adjoining panels. The Virgin clutches at her child; again, the foreknowledge of her son’s future certain, but this time with a hint of anger rather than resignation in her expression. And to the right, Christ himself, lying dead and emaciated in his tomb. 

Pietro Lorenzetti, Diptych with the Virgin and Child and the Man of Sorrows (1345)

If the left-hand panel conjures up - Mary’s anger aside - T.S. Eliot’s calming, almost mantra like lines, from the opening of Four Quartets - ‘Time present and time past / Are both perhaps present in time future …’ - the right-hand panel and those exposed ribs and unhealthy, lifeless pallor, take us to another literary figure and his reaction to a later painting. On looking at Han Holbein’s terrifyingly claustrophobic The Body of the Dead Christ in the Tomb, the Russian writer Dostoevsky was said to have remarked: “One could lose one’s faith from that picture.”

 

Hans Holbein The Younger, The Body of the Dead Christ in the Tomb (1522)

Looking again at the Lorenzetti diptych, I reached for that imaginary candle. And whilst the light animated the gorgeous greens, creams and reds of the marble surrounding the tomb of Christ, and the gold-leaf burst into flame, the lifelessness of the body didn’t stir. The man was dead and resurrection seemed very remote.  

One particular painting seemed to demand that candle - or rather a whole set - more than all the rest: Ambrogio Lorenzetti - Pietro’s younger brother - and his Annunciation. I do love an Annunciation, although one female friend who accompanied me on a visit rightly voiced doubts about the aesthetic aspects of the story. It is indeed casually violent and lines up with the rapier aspects of myth. 

Ambrogio Lorenzetti, The Annunciation (1344)

 

Here, in this large square painting, almost four feet in its dimensions, the gold leaf dominates. And within that leaf we detect words and letters horizontally shooting from Gabriel to Mary. From the top of the painting further words are fired down from heaven on a diagonal trajectory stemming from a gold monochromed man. God doing his fatherly duties? Imagine the dazzling shimmer of all this gold, the awe that those deep orange flames might have instilled in the devotee. It is also one of the few paintings in this exhibition that toys with perspective, particularly in that gorgeously tiled floor. Depth is very rare in this exhibition and this work - almost at the end of the 50-year period covered by these artists and their works - seems a rare and innovative experiment.

Indeed, the flatness and two-dimensionality, those comically middle-aged babies and their anatomical naivety, can seem strange and clumsy to sophisticated eyes. That also makes me wonder if the candles might have made these figures seem somehow less strange. Remember, even in the middle of the day, and with the absence of electricity, paintings would have been worked upon in candlelit darkness. 

Thinking about this over the past few days has caused a line of animals to come galloping into view: the stags and horses and bison of the Caves at Lascaux. I recalled reading about a fascinating theory of how these ancient yet mesmerising cave paintings, over 17,000 years old, may well have been designed to react to carefully positioned torches. Not only would they have flickered in a eerie way, but they would have also been imbued with motion. Or has some wag bathetically put it, they might have been ‘the very first GIFs’.

Details from the cave paintings at Lascaux

I wonder if there is something of this that has been lost in the way that we see these Siena paintings? Are we too quick to judge the primitive aspects of the art, as we also reach towards the comic? Indeed, though it is still a privilege to see works like this in a beautifully curated  and softly lit space, the burnt wood of Duccio’s Madonna and Child offers up a tantalising hint at a different way to view these works. Call up the insurers and get a quote.