in western art since antiquity. Both of these lights pale
in relation to the fl oodlit interior of the supper chamber,
which seems to be illuminated by the supernatural glory
of Christ and his disciples. In another astonishing step
toward realism, Pietro makes it clear that the narratives
are to be understood as a sequence of stories unfolding
over time; the moon, high over the pavilion in the Last
Supper, is shown to be setting behind the Mount of Ol-
ives in the adjacent Arrest of Christ. Other frescoes in
the left transept, such as the Deposition from the Cross
and the Entombment, do away with all anecdotal detail
to approach the monumental grandeur and dramatic
tension of Giotto’s narratives. The Deposition, in which
Christ’s broken body is ingeniously interlaced with the
living, forms one of the most sustained images of grief
in western art.
Three securely dated works succeeded the Assisi
frescoes: the Carmine Altarpiece of 1327–1329 (Siena,
Pinacoteca; New Haven, Yale Museum; Princeton,
Princeton Museum), a polyptych made to celebrate
the fi nal approval of the Carmelite order by Pope John
XXIII in 1326 for its Sienese church of San Niccolò; the
Uffi zi Madonna and Child (Florence, Uffi zi; signed and
dated 1340); and the Birth of the Virgin (Siena, Museo
dell’Opera Metropolitana; commissioned 1335, signed
and dated 1342). This last altarpiece, made as part of
a cycle of Marian altarpieces celebrating feasts of the
Virgin surrounding Duccio’s Maestà in the cathedral of
Siena, returns to the integration of frame and painting
seen in the Arezzo Polyptych of twenty-two years earlier.
Here the illusion of continuity is much more thorough.
We seem to be peering into a miniature Gothic palace
which is structurally supported by the columns and
arches of the frame and from which the exterior walls
have been removed (as in a dollhouse) to allow us to
witness the events within. And although this work is
technically a polyptych (the two lateral panels of saints
originally fl anking the Birth are now lost), there is none
of compartmentalization traditionally seen in separate
panels. The space of one panel is treated as continuous
with that of the next; thus, the two panels on the right
convey information concerning the same time and place,
Mary’s birthing chamber. To emphasize this, the fi gure
of the woman bearing a fl y whisk continues on either
side of the vertical pier of the frame. Also gone is the
traditional fl attening backdrop of gold leaf signifying a
sacred event. Instead, an opulently appointed interior,
described in rich patterns from the vault to the fl oor
tiles, defi nes a remarkably convincing illusion of spatial
recession. In the left panel depicting Joachim and the
herald, the setting suggests a vast structure beyond the
two visible chambers, indicating Pietro’s concern to
construct a completely plausible world for his fi gures
to inhabit.
Pietro worked, together with Ambrogio and Simone
Martini, on a cycle of frescoes illustrating the life of
the Virgin for the facade of the hospital of Santa Maria
della Scala in Siena. (These frescoes are now lost, but
a recorded inscription bore the date 1335.) Pietro also
worked alongside Ambrogio on a fresco cycle for the
chapter hall of the monastery of San Francesco in Siena,
of which a Crucifi xion and a Resurrected Christ survive
(possibly 1336). A Massacre of the Innocents from a
fresco cycle in San Clemente ai Servi in Siena and an
altarpiece depicting stories of the Life of the Blessed
Humilitas (Florence, Uffi zi) are two other works fre-
quently attributed to Pietro.
Lorenzo Ghiberti considered Ambrogio Lorenzetti
the greatest Sienese painter of the 1300s, surpassing
even Simone Martini in ability and sophistication. A
Madonna and Child from Vico L’Abate (signed and
dated 1319; Florence, Museo Arcivescovile del Cestello)
is the earliest of only three dated works by Ambrogio.
It shows the originality of the artist’s concepts from the
beginning of his career. Ambrogio’s panel is based on a
Byzantine type of the Virgin as the throne of God, and
the rigidly frontal, iconic pose of the Madonna adheres
closely to the archaic format. The sovereign detachment
between mother and God, typically upright in front of
the Madonna, has, however, here been replaced by a
restless, squirming Christ child seeking his mother’s
attention. Both fi gures have the solidity and roundness
of Giotto’s paintings, and the throne is also presented
as a spatially receding three-dimensional structure. This
modernization of an ancient type in the latest Giot-
toesque idiom reveals Ambrogio’s special understand-
ing of the Florentines’ achievement. In fact, Ambrogio
worked periodically in Florence between 1318 and 1332,
and he is listed in the registry of the Florentine paint-
ers’ guild in 1327. The Vico L’Abate panel is a prime
example of the astonishing variety and inventiveness
that both Pietro and Ambrogio brought to the theme of
the Madonna and child. Both artists composed cease-
less variations on this popular devotional subject, but
Ambrogio’s Madonnas, especially, attained a level of
iconographic and aesthetic sophistication that seems to
belong more to the Renaissance, or even to the Baroque,
than to the Trecento. A few of Ambrogio’s groupings
of the Madonna and child are shown as if responding
to the viewer’s presence, as in the Madonna del Latte
(Siena, Palazzo Arcivescovile), in which the suckling
child looks out at the viewer with intense curiosity;
or the Rapolano Madonna (Siena, Pinacoteca), which
portrays a Christ child so surprised and frightened by
the attention coming from our direction that he crushes
his pet goldfi nch. This psychologizing of the mother’s
and the child’s response to their surroundings reaches a
climax in the Sant’Agostino Maestà in Siena (possibly
1339), the last surviving fragment of a fresco cycle
illustrating episodes of the life of Saint Catherine ofLORENZETTI, PIETRO AND AMBROGIO