A change of perspective

Scaffolding, Hisham Matar, jigsaws, observation and Lorenzetti 1:1

Sometimes Italy allows access to fresco cycles that are being restored. Visitors climb scaffolding and finish up at eye-level with the artworks. It is such an amazing experience, a trip could be planned entirely around this opportunity. At the moment the Brancacci chapel (1425-1427) in Florence can be enjoyed in this unique manner. The Lorenzetti Sala del Nove (1338-1339) in the Palazzo Pubblico in Siena is also “open” until the end of January. Before you rush to book a flight, I am afraid the 54 timed entries permitted per day sold out soon after the initiative was announced. Unfortunately there is no way of knowing what else one might see nation-wide and certainly here in Tuscany every manner of subliminal hurdle is firmly in place; information only in Italian, open on alternate days of the week, kafka-esque websites, minimal advance notice. It is the usual Darwinian selection process, where only the truly dedicated will succeed.

Having had the incredible good fortune both to get tickets and to visit the two cantieri - the Italian term for construction site is the one used to officially describe this viewing set-up - I am now an absolute scaffolding convert, ruined forever for normal viewing positions. No more binoculars for me. Every time I have to look up I find myself longing for a raised platform. The reality of being face to face to these artworks, in the same relationship as the painters were themselves as they painted them, is immensely and unexpectedly moving. It is impossible not to feel kinship with the tiny number of people across the centuries who have shared this perspective and to feel the awareness that one will never see those specific works in the same way again, in the most literal sense of the phrase. Siena’s town council advertised their with a poster showing a headshot of a lugubrious Buongoverno staring right at the viewer. The brilliant caption reads: “Look me in the eyes,” the title of many an Italian song.

I have been thinking about looking, having just read A Month in Siena by Hisham Matar. In 1990 he was a young man at university in London when his father was abducted by the Libyan regime. “He was imprisoned and gradually, like salt dissolving in water, was made to vanish.” This was when Matar began a lifetime habit of looking at a single artwork for hours at at time.

“A picture changes as you look at it and changes in ways that are unexpected”

He becomes fascinated by the Sienese school of art which he finds foreign and bewildering yet full of hope and commonality. This slim volume recounts a month spent in Siena in 2016 and the pictures with which he engaged. He walks the boundaries of the town and discovers his own limits, sharing exquisite observations regarding life, art, friendship and grief. I am grateful to him for dimantling and articulating my own sense of unease when I encountered the knowing gaze of the baby in Lorenzetti’s Madonna del Latte and for his astute observations about the museum guards in the Pinacoteca.

“Has it not always seemed that these figures, and across national divides, in all the museums around the world, share the same private grievance, as though they have been let down by the rest of us?”

Yes.

Last year in Bergamo with old friends, I was introduced to the idea of observing a single work of art for three hours as an exercise in patience. This activity is promoted by Oliver Burkeman in his book Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals, and was suggested to him by art historian Jennifer Roberts (more details and the tale of an attempt here). It has obvious appeal to my demographic¹. I have yet to be provided a chair in a gallery but I do complete a jigsaw puzzle of the Lorenzetti Effects of Good Government once a year. It shows just one of the three walls in the Sala del Nove, split between harmonious scenes of urban and country life. As we were standing in our regimented group of ten on the creaky boards of the cantiere, face to face with images I had contemplated for hours, I realised that I had inadvertently trained my gaze.

Lorenzetti was the first artist to portray weather, recognisable realistic landscape and detailed architecture. There is no doubt that he is depicting his home-town, Siena, and in an inscription he is at pains to specify that he was from Siena (Ambrosius Laurentii de Senis). The Cathedral is there, as well as a team of safety-adverse builders in the act of building an unrecognisable Torre della Mangia with buche pontarie for scaffolding. These holes were rarely filled and are still visible on many buildings bordering Piazza del Campo today, a source of much joy to the pigeon community. Amazing @sienaartguide clarified that while Lorenzetti was painting the walls of the Sala del Nove, the tower was in the process of being built. She helped me see a cobbler’s assistant chewing leather to soften it, and pointed out Talamone, Siena’s much desired yet elusive port, and Monte Amiata. The details are astounding: plants on terraces, birdcages on windowsills, crenellated roofs and every shape of window. Industrious inhabitants are busy making, selling and studying. Censors at some point in history scratched off two scenes that showed gambling and a pawn shop. A special mention goes to the lady collecting rain water from her drainpipe, high up on a terrace. Scarcity of water was a huge issue for medieval Siena, evinced by the ubiquitous urban fountains and the bottini, a 25km network of underground acqueducts. These frescoes encapsulate the ideals of 14th-century Tuscany, and give a wonderful and exact picture of the daily life and customs of the time, including tools and footwear. I can’t wait to look at them again.

For the 2022 festive season Siena town council invested heavily in a video mapping of the Lorenzetti frescoes on the Palazzo facade. Civic dissent regarding the sum involved was instantly quashed after the inaugural screening. The success of the mesmerising video mapping, the sold-out cantiere tickets, and the brilliant 2018 Lorenzetti exhition that had to be extended for an extra month after 35.000 visitors flocked to Siena, are all grounds for optimism that while the Sala del Nove is closed to the public there will be something creative and wonderful organised in its stead. If you are feeling bereft, at the very least, invest in a copy of Nancy Shroyer Howard’s book for children, Mischief in Tuscany, or let me know if you would like me to send you a puzzle of your own. It will definitely take more than three hours, and you may find yourself joining the ranks of Lorenzetti fans.

1. Middle-aged women re-evaluating their attitudes to productivity and time as we process the realisation that our lives so far were not actually a dress rehearsal.