3 - Context

Summary

This chapter aims to explore why Siena came to be a likely crucible for this moment of innovation in the mid-fourteenth century. I want to consider the notion that Siena had a culture of artists ‘thinking outside the box’ – working in many media, intervening in one another’s projects and producing objects in one medium that look like objects in another. In this area, a cathedral facade can look like a reliquary, an altarpiece can look like a cathedral facade and reliquaries can attempt to evoke architectural forms, painted panels of all scales and metalwork objects. Essentially all these types of object engage in a close conversation in Siena at this time. That conversation is concerned with approaching the divine, and about different ways of doing that, and also about the different visual and material properties that can be employed in that endeavour. The design of great churches and cathedrals was to some extent intended to create a spatial and visual journey towards the divine. On entering a building the devotee would pass through the doorways in a cathedral facade. The goal of the journey within the cathedral building was the altar, at which the devotee would come close to the physical remains of saints, holy men and women who had gone before and who would be expected to help the human devotee in an intercessory capacity in their journey through life, to heaven, towards the divine. The material remains of saints could be in the form of relics that were placed inside the altar at the time of consecration, or the remains of saints interred beneath or in the altar, or the relics placed inside reliquaries displayed upon the altar. At the altar, also, the devotee could approach the reserved sacrament of the eucharist. Such journeyings from facade to altar or shrine, often via one or more screens, happened all over Europe, of course. The formal and visual relationships between cathedral facades and their interior screens have been documented and explored by scholars such as Jacqueline Jung and Carolyn Marino Malone.