The true birthplace of the Renaissance

The baby reaches out to touch his mother’s scarf: he studies her face intently, and she focuses entirely on him. There is connection; there is familiarity; there is love. It could be one of the pictures on my phone from last weekend of my daughter with her six-month-old. In fact, it dates from Tuscany c.1290, and the mother and child are the Virgin Mary and Christ.

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It’s a small painting, tempera on wood; it’s the opener of the National Gallery’s new blockbuster, Siena: The Rise of Painting 1300-1350; and it’s there to make the show’s fundamental point, which is that its creator, the Sienese Duccio, introduced many of the painterly innovations that paved the way for the Renaissance. With this ‘Virgin and Child’, emotion takes centre stage.

It’s a surprise, because it was Florence, and not its smaller cousin Siena, that went down in history as the birthplace of the Renaissance. And yet in central London this week the evidence is assembled: the novel approach to human gestures pioneered by Duccio is only one of the jigsaw pieces.

Also key to the story is the prosperity enjoyed by Trecento Siena: by the late 1200s it was a major banking centre. And it was sited on the Via Francigena, the main artery for pilgrims travelling between Canterbury and Rome. Trade networks were strong, especially with the all-important Silk Road; and the government, a rotation of nine men elected every two months, was stronger than that of other city states in the region.

This relatively stable, prosperous backdrop, the curators of the Siena show argue, gave the city the essential ingredients to become a breeding ground for artistic creativity.