Day trip to Siena for the Ambrogio Lorenzetti show

Bus ride to Siena on a rainy day

Monday was yet another rainy, cool day. Despite the weather we bought bus tickets and rode with a friend to Siena about 47 miles to the south. A museum in that town, Santa Maria della Scala, was offering a show of the work of Ambrogio Lorenzetti, a Sienese artist of the early 1300s. 

We were impessed with Lorenzetti’s work. What we learned about Lorenzetti’s painting of the Annunciation surprised us.

Museum for Lorenzetti show

Ambrogio Lorenzetti’s best known works, the Allegory of Good Government, the Effects of Good Government in the City and in the Country (in the city, look here; in the country, lookhere), and Bad Government and the Effects of Bad Government are frescoes in the Palazzo Publico, the city’s historic civic building. 

The Poor Clares

The subject matter of the Good and Bad Government frescoes is remarkable. In a time when artistic effort was aimed toward retelling religious stories, these frescoes were entirely secular in nature. Not only was the vision of the artist remarkable but so was the leadership of the city who hired Lorenzetti to decorate the room where the city leaders met.

Saint Michael killing the Devil

Much of Lorenzetti’s work, however, was religious but with an emphasis on the human aspects of religious experience. The show at Santa Maria della Scala collected works of Ambrogio Lorenzetti from a variety of sources so they could be shown in the same place at the same time.

We were impressed by a fragment of a fresco that show a group of nuns who were members of a group called the Poor Clares, a group of women who lead a cloistered life of prayer and poverty. In the fragment of a fresco the nuns appear with their devout attention focused out of the frame of the painting. They are four individuals and Lorenzetti gave them separate identities.

Also impressive was a work in painted stained glass of San Michele the Archangel conquering the Devil who, in this case, appears a frighteningly long, green snake. The work is luminous and the display of the piece was lit nicely from the back.

The most impressive piece to us was an Annunciation done by Lorenzetti for a monastery at Montesiepe. Here is a link to the whole work as it could be seen at the monastery: Annunciation by Ambrogio Lorenzetti at the Montesiepi Cappella. The depiction seems typical. The Angel Gabriel appears, tells Mary that she will bear the son of God by way of an Immaculate Conception, and Mary reacts blandly by folding her hands submissively across her chest. But Mary’s head seems to float separate from her body. The area under her floating face appears to be damaged.

Annunciation by an unknown Tuscan artist ca. 1200

A real, human Mary might swoon at this news from a heavenly messenger but Mary in Italian art is either passive or, at the most, mildly concerned. The photo below shows the earliest Annunciation in the Uffizi where Mary bows her head calmly. In Botticelli’s Annunciation painted 300 years later Mary recoils with grace but not with shock or even concern. Da Vinci’s Annunciation done a few years earlier shows Mary expressing only mild interest as she daintily looks up from her book. All Annunciations seem to involve a mother-to-be who is unnaturally accepting of what has happened.

Mary reacts to hearing the news from Gabriel

But that was not Mary’s reaction in the Annunciation that Ambrogio Lorenzetti’s had planned.

In 1966-1967 work was done to preserve and protect this work. First the fresco itself was peeled off the wall. This revealed the rough coat of plaster under the fresco where Lorenzetti had made is preparatory drawing for his painting. The preparatory drawing showed a very different Mary and a very different reaction to the news brought by Gabriel.

But first a note on how fresco painting is done.

Frescoes are applied in two layers. The rough underlayer is applied and allowed to dry. On this surface the painter sketches a plan for the work he or she will do later. The painting in the final layer, however, is done is fresh wet plaster so that the paint is in the plaster, not merely on the plaster. The final layer, then, is done much more slowly, perhaps a square foot at a time. The sketch done in the underlayer disappears as the fresco is completed.

Today art preservationists peel these separate layers off and the underlying plans are revealed. Most times the plans are followed closely. But in Lorenzetti’s plan a very different reaction was planned for Mary. Lorenzetti was to have Mary collapse and control her fall by grabbing hold of a column to control her fall. This was a stunningly human representation compared to all the Annunciations that preceded and followed.

Lorenzetti's portrayal of Mary's reaction to Gabriel's message

The monks, evidently, were not fans of Lorenzetti’s interpretation of Mary’s reaction. Soon after Lorenzetti left, the monks hired another painter to portray a more traditional submissive Mary. The stunned reaction of Lorenzetti’s more human Mary remained in the underlayer where she waited 700 years to be discovered.