14th-Century Italian Painting: Siena and Florence Schools
Trecento: Italian Painting in the 14th Century
During the Gothic period in Italy, fresco painting flourished due to the permanence of walls in churches, unlike the rest of Europe. Painting on wood also developed. Painting increasingly moved towards greater naturalism in the representation of landscapes and figures. Not all artists mixed colors to create light and represent space successfully. The Italians called the fourteenth century the Trecento, and two schools stand out:
- The Sienese School, continuing the Byzantine tradition.
- The Florentine School, which transformed painting, anticipating some elements of the Renaissance.
Sienese School
Medieval theorists understood Greek art through the imitation of Byzantine mosaics, representing icons silhouetted against gold backgrounds. Sienese painters never renounced this language but renewed it with Gothic innovations. Their painting is characterized by:
- Being much more Gothic than that of the Florentine school.
- Delicacy and elegance.
- Abundance of themes and decorative colors.
Its artists include:
- Duccio di Buoninsegna, founder of the school, whose most important work is the Maestà , representing the Virgin and Child surrounded by angels.
- Simone Martini, the great teacher of the school, expressed a synthesis of Byzantine and Gothic art, producing precious works through beauty, richness of color, and the reproduction of movement. His characters are refined, and details are treated with exquisite care. His figures are graceful, with contours outlined in black.
Martini’s first works were commissioned to decorate the city of Siena. In the plenary hall of the Municipality, he painted the Maestà , an icon of the Virgin under a canopy, surrounded by local saints. Opposite this, he painted the first equestrian portrait in Italian art: the image of Condottiere Guidoriccio da Fogliano. His masterpiece is the altarpiece of The Annunciation, where he blends the Byzantine gold background with the French Gothic wavy line, visible in the refined and elegant silhouettes of the angel and Mary. It is a tempera painting on wood where he portrayed the scene as it appears in the Gospel of St. John, depicting the Virgin and the kneeling angel, creating an impactful icon.
The Florentine School
In Florence, Giotto di Bondone definitively broke with the Greek manner and opened the doors to a modern pictorial language, achieving plastic volume, the reality of the landscape, and dramatic scenes. He was a sculptor, architect, and painter, becoming a precedent for Renaissance painting.
His work gave new courage to nature. His figures abandoned earlier sterilization, becoming more natural, with individual expression and volume, wearing large coats. He used colors with a new technique that allowed him to develop lighter and more vivid colors. With his treatment of light, he created a feeling of space, even though his skies are uniform blue or gray, and the rule of perspective was not yet known. His play of light and shadows created a sense of depth.
He kept typical elements of Gothic painting, such as oval faces, almond-shaped eyes, and the use of gold leaf around the figures.
These developments began to materialize in the Franciscan Stories of the Basilica of Assisi: twenty-eight frescoes on the life of Francis of Assisi. In each panel, figures are highlighted with solid colors and shapes. The landscapes dilate in the backgrounds; some scenes feature animals, and others show architecture cut on purpose to reveal the interior.
The prestige gained in Assisi prompted the Florentine bourgeoisie to commission him to decorate funeral chapels. He painted for Enrico Scrovegni in Padua, creating evangelical episodes where the characters interacted. Later, he went to Florence and decorated the tombs of bankers Bardi and Peruzzi in the Church of Santa Croce. In the Bardi chapel, he reenacted scenes from the life of St. Francis of Assisi, while in the Peruzzi chapel, he depicted scenes from the life of St. John the Baptist. He also painted on wood, maintaining the Byzantine style of the Sienese school and his teacher, notably the Virgin Enthroned with Angels.
From Giotto onward, mural painting became an Italian conquest.