The Met's Sienese Art Blockbuster Exhibition Review
The Metropolitan Museum of Art's latest exhibition, "Siena: The Rise of Painting, 1300–1350," is a blockbuster show that has the potential to reorder the Western canon. The exhibition features a diverse range of artworks from 13th-century Sienese artists, including Duccio, Simone Martini, Pietro Lorenzetti, and Ambrogio Lorenzetti. The Exhibition's Highlights The exhibition's greatest achievement is reassembling all eight of the remaining panels of the predella from Duccio's Maestà (1308–11). Each painting offers its own thrills, but one of the most notable is The Transfiguration , in which Jesus Christ stands stoically on a craggy peak, his disciples looking on with a mixture of surprise and horror. The Artists' Use of Gold Leaf The exhibition showcases the artists' use of gold leaf, which was a common technique in Byzantine art. However, the Sienese artists used gold leaf in a more innovative way, often eschewing backgrounds altogether in favor ...