Try not to miss two important exhibitions still on in Siena until the end of the month celebrating a major figure from its fifteenth-century past, considered by many in terms of his versatility to be a precursor of Leonardo da Vinci. The sponsor and moving force behind both shows, as always with major cultural events in Siena, is the bank of Monte dei Paschi, the oldest bank in the world and still the financial power behind the city. In the past it has been responsible for, among other exhibitions, "Sienese Gothic", in 1982 and "Domenico Beccafumi and the art of his time", in 1990.
Francesco di Giorgio Martini (1439-1501) was painter, sculptor, architect and engineer. He painted altarpieces and the predella panels that run along their bases; sculpted figures and reliefs in marble, wood and bronze; and designed fortresses, ramparts, aqueducts, and buildings both religious and secular. His exemplary Renaissance career is charted in the two exhibitions which also provide the visitor with an itinerary that leads through Siena from the outer walls near Porta Romana into the heart at Piazza del Campo, the church of Sant' Agostino and the Palazzo Pubblico.
The Piranesi-like brick vaults of the Magazzini del Sale in the Palazzo Pubblico have been used to display documents relating to Francesco di Giorgio as an architect: sketchbooks; architectural treatises, both manuscript and printed; wooden models and iconographical paintings and documents from various periods. The exhibition, arranged in a sequence of displays that look spectacular but make few concessions to the uninformed visitor, has been organised by Nicholas Adams, Howard Burns, Francesco Paolo Fiore and Manfredo Tafuri. A catalogue is available, and should be bought as it explains much which the exhibition itself leaves mysterious.
The second show, mounted in the large and well-lit interior of Vanvitelli's Neo-classical church of Sant' Agostino, examines the social and historical context within which Francesco di Giorgio worked and is thrilling for the wealth of masterpieces assembled here. There is, for example, the unforgettable trio of spare, holy men: Lorenzo Vecchietta's risen Christ in bronze, Donatello's John the Baptist, also in bronze, and Francesco di Giorgio's John the Baptist in polychrome wood. Curated by Professor Luciano Bellosi of Siena University and his students, the exhibition puts forward a new view of Renaissance Siena, one which goes beyond the traditional figures of Sassetta, Sano di Pietro, Giovanni di Paolo, Matteo di Giovanni and Neroccio de' Landi to re-examine the famous art historian Roberto Longhi's theories of Florentine influence on the work of artists such as Domenico di Bartolo and Lorenzo Vecchietta and shows Francesco di Giorgio to have been an enthusiast for Renaissance ideas in the second half of the fifteenth century. The goldsmiths' and jewellers' work, drawings, sculpture, miniatures and paintings on show have been loaned from Sienese churches and from American and European museums. These relate to other works of art in Siena's Pinacoteca Nazionale and the Baptistery and visitors are encouraged to go and see these works in their original setting.
Francesco di Giorgio received his artistic training in the workshop of Lorenzo Vecchietta where the influences of Simone Martini and Sassetta met with the new style of painting evolving at that time in Florence, concerned with light, colour and perspective and embodied in the work of Domenico Veneziano. Donatello was a prominent figure in Siena at that time and his work was a constant influence on the painting and sculpture of Francesco di Giorgio, even as Siena was opening out to the work of more distant artists, such as the miniatures of Gerolamo da Cremona and Liberale da Verona and the Florentine innovations of Pollaiuolo. Despite invitations from the most powerful courts in Italy, Francesco chose to make Siena the base from which he gathered together the strands of artistic innovation in Italy, thus preparing the ground for the arrival of Luca Signorelli in 1490 and, subsequently, Pinturicchio.
The question is why, knowing the background to Francesco's career, he acquired a reputation as an elegant but brittle and archaising painter which at the same time he was appreciated as a major innovator in the fields of architecture and sculpture, a forerunner of such important figures as Bramante, Peruzzi and Giulio Romano or even, when one considers some of his sculpted nudes, of Michelangelo.
Professor Bellosi addresses this problem in his revisionist exhibition and proposes that Francesco di Giorgio only worked directly on his paintings early in his career; works from those years are now considered to include paintings formerly given to Vecchietta and Domenico Veneziano. As his architectural work took up more of his time Francesco was obliged to delegate painting commissions to his workshop. This hypothesis is reinforced by the documented preoccupation among Italian Renaissance nobility with fortifications and military architecture - talents for which in Urbino, Milan, Naples, Jesi and Cortona Francesco di Giorgio found greater appreciation than for his paintings.