(Event 2: Sat 4 Oct 2025 3.00pm  Little Missenden Village Hall)

The recent exhibition Siena: The Rise of Painting 1300-1350 (Metropolitan Museum, New York, in 2024 and National Gallery, London, earlier this year) opened people’s eyes (and minds, and hearts) to a remarkable period of artistic creativity originating in a single medieval Tuscan city. Spurred on by competitiveness and curiosity, leading Sienese painters pushed the boundaries of what painting could be.

This lecture introduces four outstanding artists (Duccio di Buoninsegna, Simone Martini, and the brothers Pietro and Ambrogio Lorenzetti), tracing, through their exhibited works, achievements in storytelling recounted with beauty and emotion. And it will also consider the wider narrative that the exhibition presented, reflecting briefly on the complexities of putting on such an ambitious show and its accompanying publication.

nationalgallery.org.uk/exhibitions/past/siena-the-rise-of-painting;