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Siena shows it's a Renaissance rival
By Louise Jury, Evening Standard 23.10.07
Exquisite: The Story Of The Patient Griselda, Part I: Marriage (circa 1493-94) is among more than 100 Renaissance works from Siena being exhibited at the National Gallery
Pieced together: Matteo di Giovanni's The Assumption Of The Virgin altarpiece, from about 1474
The Italian city of Siena is lending its finest artistic treasures for an exhibition designed to show the Renaissance was not confined to Florence.
More than 100 paintings, sculptures and drawings have been brought together by the National Gallery in a showcase of the cultural flowering at one of Florence's rival cities.
The works include Matteo di Giovanni's Assumption altarpiece from the Siena-ruled town of Asciano. The centre panel of the work, which is in the National Gallery's collection, will be reunited for the first time with all the other surviving parts. Research carried out for the exhibition confirmed they were all from the same piece, as pegs and holes in adjacent panels corresponded.
The exhibition also reunites a series of ancient heroes and heroines created for a noble marriage by the leading painters of the 1490s.
They have been brought together from collections as far apart as Budapest and Baltimore. Luke Syson, the exhibition's curator, said: "I'm hoping this will show people that what we think we know of the Italian Renaissance is not all there is to know. I'm not for a moment disputing the beauties of Florentine art, but there were other things going on in Italy that were just as wonderful."
Siena was a fiercely proud republic which produced its own distinctive masters and masterpieces, even if names such as Francesco di Giorgio and Domenico Beccafumi are not as well-known as Florence's Michelangelo. "There's a desire for exquisiteness in Sienese art and a light delicacy," said Mr Syson. "They contain lines that move your eye across the surface of the painting rather than directing you to the centre."
• Renaissance Siena: Art For A City, sponsored by the Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena, opens tomorrow and runs until 13 January.
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