Description
The Pinacoteca Nazionale is Siena's main state museum and gathers Sienese painting from the thirteenth to the seventeenth century. It is housed in two palaces on Via San Pietro, Buonsignori and Brigidi, and is visited in chronological order, from the gold grounds of the "primitives" to the sixteenth century of Sodoma and Beccafumi.
The core of the collection was born in the eighteenth century, when convents were being suppressed and the old gilded panels risked being destroyed or sold.
Two learned abbots, Giuseppe Ciaccheri and Luigi De Angelis, gathered them. The collection grew in the nineteenth century through deposits and gifts, passed to the State in 1930 and opened with its chronological arrangement in 1932.
You begin on the second floor. The Paliotto del Salvatore, dated 1215, is the oldest documented work of the Sienese school.
Then comes Duccio di Buoninsegna, with the Madonna dei Francescani, and Simone Martini with the Altarpiece of Blessed Agostino Novello. In the rooms of the Lorenzetti brothers is Pietro's Carmine Altarpiece, one of the absolute masterpieces of Sienese fourteenth-century art.
Further on you meet Giovanni di Paolo and Sassetta, with two small landscapes, the City by the Sea and the Castle by a Lake, once attributed to Ambrogio Lorenzetti. Then Francesco di Giorgio, Neroccio, Sano di Pietro with his large polyptychs.
On the first floor comes the sixteenth century. Sodoma and Beccafumi have rooms all to themselves; in room 30 are the cartoons Beccafumi prepared for the cathedral floor. In a corridor overlooking the courtyard there is also the portrait of Elizabeth I of England with the sieve of the vestal Tuccia, by Quinten Massys the Younger.
Palazzo Brigidi hides a dark story. It is believed to have been the residence of the Pannocchieschi, the family of Nello, husband of Pia de' Tolomei, mentioned by Dante in the Purgatorio, whom he is said to have killed out of jealousy or in order to remarry.
The spiral staircase connecting all the floors is named after her, down to the cellar where she is said to have been held prisoner.
Palazzo Buonsignori dates from the fifteenth century, but its facade, restored in the nineteenth, imitates the medieval Palazzo Pubblico.
Don't miss
• Duccio's Madonna dei Francescani.
• Pietro Lorenzetti's Carmine Altarpiece.
• The City by the Sea and the Castle by a Lake.
• Beccafumi's cartoons.
Did you know?
• Ambrogio Lorenzetti's Annunciation, from 1348, is his last known work: he probably died shortly afterward, during the plague.
• You can see Pia's staircase by leaning over from the second floor, but you cannot walk it.
The core of the collection was born in the eighteenth century, when convents were being suppressed and the old gilded panels risked being destroyed or sold.
Two learned abbots, Giuseppe Ciaccheri and Luigi De Angelis, gathered them. The collection grew in the nineteenth century through deposits and gifts, passed to the State in 1930 and opened with its chronological arrangement in 1932.
You begin on the second floor. The Paliotto del Salvatore, dated 1215, is the oldest documented work of the Sienese school.
Then comes Duccio di Buoninsegna, with the Madonna dei Francescani, and Simone Martini with the Altarpiece of Blessed Agostino Novello. In the rooms of the Lorenzetti brothers is Pietro's Carmine Altarpiece, one of the absolute masterpieces of Sienese fourteenth-century art.
Further on you meet Giovanni di Paolo and Sassetta, with two small landscapes, the City by the Sea and the Castle by a Lake, once attributed to Ambrogio Lorenzetti. Then Francesco di Giorgio, Neroccio, Sano di Pietro with his large polyptychs.
On the first floor comes the sixteenth century. Sodoma and Beccafumi have rooms all to themselves; in room 30 are the cartoons Beccafumi prepared for the cathedral floor. In a corridor overlooking the courtyard there is also the portrait of Elizabeth I of England with the sieve of the vestal Tuccia, by Quinten Massys the Younger.
Palazzo Brigidi hides a dark story. It is believed to have been the residence of the Pannocchieschi, the family of Nello, husband of Pia de' Tolomei, mentioned by Dante in the Purgatorio, whom he is said to have killed out of jealousy or in order to remarry.
The spiral staircase connecting all the floors is named after her, down to the cellar where she is said to have been held prisoner.
Palazzo Buonsignori dates from the fifteenth century, but its facade, restored in the nineteenth, imitates the medieval Palazzo Pubblico.
Don't miss
• Duccio's Madonna dei Francescani.
• Pietro Lorenzetti's Carmine Altarpiece.
• The City by the Sea and the Castle by a Lake.
• Beccafumi's cartoons.
Did you know?
• Ambrogio Lorenzetti's Annunciation, from 1348, is his last known work: he probably died shortly afterward, during the plague.
• You can see Pia's staircase by leaning over from the second floor, but you cannot walk it.