The golden age of Siena’s painting regains strength at Bozart (with a special guest from Boston)

 

The most seductive piece among the sixty delicate artworks gathered together in occasion of the exhibition dedicated to the treasure of the Pinacoteca Nazionale di Siena by Bozart Expo, in Brussels – Painting from Siena. Ars narrandi in Europe’s Gothic Age, until 19 January – is, from our point of view, the so called Madonna of Humility painted by Giovanni di Paolo around 1442.

 

Despite the exhibition’s title, the painting is actually on loan from the Museum of Fine Art in Boston – and this makes the show at Bozart a must visit, even if you are already familiar with Siena and with names such as Lorenzetti, Sassetta, Duccio, Simone Martini (all of them are represented in Brussels by valuable pieces). According to the short but very well sharp description provided by the web-site of the MFA – something that none of the pieces coming from Siena can count on, since the Pinacoteca Nazionale has a ridiculous website, like the great part of Italian historical museums – the painting is in its original frame and in a perfect state of preservation. As it was typical at that time, humility is symbolized by the Virgin sitting on a pillow, placed on a beautiful carpet of flowers, and not on a throne.

 

At the backside of the Virgin, beyond a sheltering screen of fruit trees is an hypnotic hill, painted through a sort of “fish-eye” lens and covered with cultivated fields, fortified towns, stony roads, and a certain number of nude, pointed mountains. Nevertheless the painting is clearly lyrical, with all its volumes moving harmoniously and the colour palette set to make the fruits and flowers emerging from the background like if they were precious jewels offered to the mother and the baby.

 

Humble and lyrical are indeed the two key adjectives to describe this painting. By bearing these two words in mind, and with a hint of knowledge about the present, it won’t be difficult to reallocate Giovanni di Paolo out of the predictable a strict museum setting, especially if you find yourself in a conceptual city like Bruxelles, hosting many inspiring galleries of contemporary art, that are exactly what Siena nowadays doesn’t have at all.

November 13, 2014