RENAISSANCE SIENA - ART OF A CITY

Sienese art was very deliberately shaped and sustained by the patronage of powerful and wealthy families, such as the Petrucci, Piccolomini and the Spannochi, to provide an artistic language for an ambitious city. These commissions drew on Siena's famed decorative traditions and introduced the influences of foreign artists, such as Signorelli, Pintoricchio and Raphael. Rarely enslaved to the emerging naturalistic convention, a direct line can be traced from Sienese artists such as Vecchietta and Francesco di Giorgio to Matteo di Giovanni, Neroccio de' Landi, Pietro Orioli and Beccafumi. These artists combined exquisite colour, decoration, sinuous line and delicate beauty, with ambitious compositions and figure style. This beautiful catalogue reveals Sienese painting, drawing and sculpture as one of the most distinctive, elegant and moving schools of Italian art, created during a period of fascinating power shifts within the city itself.