Museo dell’Opera del Duomo
Siena’s most enjoyable museum was built to house the cathedral’s art. Stand eye-to-eye with the saints and angels who once languished unknown in the church’s upper reaches (where copies are found today). The museum’s centerpiece—an altarpiece by Duccio—once stood in the center of the church. And the museum’s high point is one of the loftiest in town, offering expansive views of the church and the city.
(See “Siena” map, here.)
Cost: €7, covered by Opa Si combo-ticket, buy tickets near Duomo Museum entry.
Hours: Daily March-Oct 10:30-19:00, Nov-Feb 10:30-17:30, last entry 30 minutes before closing.
Getting There: It’s next to the Duomo, in the skeleton of the unfinished part of the church on the Il Campo side; look for the white banner.
Information: Tel. 0577-286-300, www.operaduomo.siena.it.
Audioguides: You can rent a videoguide on a tablet computer for €4 (€6/2 people). A pricier option also covers the Duomo and other sights, but you have to pick it up and drop it off inside the cathedral (for details, see here).
Photography: Not allowed except from the viewpoint.
Length of This Tour: Allow one hour.
Starring: Duccio, the Virgin Mary, and the Tuscan view.
Nearby Eateries: For restaurants near the Duomo Museum, see here.
The ground floor houses the church’s original statues, mainly from the facade and exterior. After descending a few steps, turn your back on the hall of statues and wrought-iron gate.
• You’re now face-to-face with...
In this round, carved relief, a slender and tender Mary gazes down at her chubby-cheeked baby. The thick folds of her headdress stream down around her smooth face. Her sad eyes say that she knows the eventual fate of her son. Donatello creates the illusion of Mary’s three-dimensional “lap” using only a few inches of depth cut into the creamy-rose stone. Move to the far right and look at Mary’s face from an angle (try not to notice impish Jesus); think of the challenge involved in carving the illusion of such depth.
• On the opposite side of the room is...
Until recently, this splendid original window was located above and behind the Duomo’s altar. Now the church has a copy, and art lovers can enjoy a close-up look at this masterpiece. The rose window—20 feet across, made in 1288—is dedicated (like the church and the city itself) to the Virgin Mary. In the window’s bottom panel, Mary (in blue) lies stretched across a red coffin while a crowd of mourners looks on. Miraculously, Mary was spared the pain of death (the Assumption, central panel); winged angels carry her up in a holy bubble to heaven (top panel), where Christ sets her on a throne beside him and crowns her.
The work was designed by Siena’s most famous artist, Duccio di Buoninsegna (c. 1255-1319). Duccio combined elements from rigid Byzantine icons (Mary’s almond-shaped bubble, called a mandorla, and the full-frontal saints that flank her) with a budding sense of 3-D realism (the throne turned at a three-quarter angle to simulate depth, with angels behind). Also notice how the angels in the central panel spread their wings out beyond the border of the window frame.
The Sienese army defeated Florence in the bloody battle of Montaperti, thanks, many believed, to the divine intervention of the Virgin. For the next 80 years of prosperity, Sienese artists cranked out countless Madonnas as a way of saying grazie. Bear in mind that the Duomo’s main altar was originally dominated by Duccio’s Maestà, a huge golden altarpiece of the Virgin in Majesty (which you’ll see upstairs) that was bathed in the golden-blue light from this window.
• Lining this main room are...
Giovanni Pisano spent a decade (c. 1285-1296) carving and orchestrating the decoration of the cathedral—saints, prophets, sibyls, animals, and the original she-wolf with Romulus and Remus. These life-size, robed saints stand in a relaxed contrapposto, with open mouths and expressive gestures. Their heads jut out—Pisano’s way of making them more visible from below. Some turn and seem to converse with their neighbors, especially evident with Moses (Mosè) and the sister who raised him like a mother, Miriam (Maria di Mosè, on the left side of the room). The copies of these two stand on the right side of the church, where they appear to interact.
Down a few steps in Rooms 11 and 12 are the two lions that once looked down from the church’s main entrance, and Pisano’s 12 apostles who originally lined the nave. (See old photos on the wall.) Tastes changed over the centuries, and the apostles were later moved up to the roof, where they eroded. Pisano’s relaxed realism and expressive gestures were a major influence on later Florentine sculptors like Donatello.
• Retrace your steps and go up to the...
• Head to the left, through a glass door into the darkened Room 6, for a private audience with Duccio’s Madonna.
The panels in this room were once part of the Duomo’s main altarpiece. Grab a seat and study one of the great pieces of medieval art. Although the former altarpiece was disassembled (and the frame was lost), most of the pieces are displayed here, with the front side (Maestà, with Mary and saints; pronounced my-STAH) at one end of the room and the back side (26 Passion panels) at the other.
Imagine these separate panels pieced together, set into their original gold, prickly, 15-by-15-foot wood frame and placed on the main altar in the Duomo. For two centuries it gave the congregation something to look at while the priests turned their backs at Communion time. The Christ Child stared back.
At the center of the front side sit the Virgin and Child, surrounded by angels and saints. Mary is a melancholy queen on an inlaid-marble throne. Young angels lean their elbows on the back of the throne and sigh. We see the throne head-on, unnaturally splayed open (a Byzantine style popular at the time in Siena). Mary is massive, twice the size of the saints around her, and she clearly stands out from the golden background. Unlike traditional full-frontal Byzantine icons, she turns slightly sideways to touch her baby, who does not bless us.
The city of Siena is dedicated to this Lady, who backed the Sienese against Florence in the bloody battle of Montaperti in 1260. Here, she’s triumphant, visited by Siena’s four patron saints (kneeling in front), John the Baptist and other saints (the first choir row), more angels in a row (soprano section), and, chiming in from up in the balcony, James the Great and the 12 apostles.
The painting was revolutionary for the time in its sheer size and opulence, and in Duccio’s budding realism, which broke standard conventions. Duccio, at the height of his powers, used every innovative arrow in his quiver. He replaced the standard gold-leaf background (symbolizing heaven) with a gold, intricately patterned curtain draped over the throne. Mary’s blue robe opens to reveal her body, and the curve of her knee suggests real anatomy beneath the robe. Baby Jesus wears a delicately transparent garment. Their faces are modeled with light—a patchwork of bright flesh and shadowy valleys, as if lit from the left (a technique he likely learned from his contemporary Giotto during a visit to Florence).
Along the base of Mary’s throne is an inscription (“Mater sancta dei...” or “Holy Mother of God...”) asking Mary to bring peace to Siena (Senis) and long life to Duccio (Ducio)—quite a tribute in a time when painters were usually treated as anonymous craftsmen.
• Look on the opposite wall to find scenes from...
The flip side of the altarpiece featured 26 smaller panels—the medieval equivalent of book pages—showing colorful scenes from the Passion of Christ.
The panels showcase the budding Tuscan style that united realism and storytelling. It doesn’t take a Bible scholar to “read” these panels, left to right. Christ on a donkey (lower left) makes his triumphal entry into the city gate of Jerusalem (or is it Siena?). Next, he washes his disciples’ feet in a realistic, three-dimensional room. But Duccio hasn’t fully mastered perspective—in the Last Supper, we see Christ eye-to-eye, but view the table from above. Christ is arrested in Gethsemane, and so on, until the climactic Crucifixion. The Crucifixion is given the standard gold background, but the cross is set in a real-world location: on a terraced hillside, amid the crowd. Jesus’ followers express human emotion rarely seen in earlier art.
The crowd scenes in the Passion panels aren’t arranged in neat choir rows, but in more natural-looking groups. Duccio sets figures in motion, with individual faces expressing sorrow, anger, and agitation. Duccio’s human realism would be taken to the next level by his Florentine counterpart Giotto, often called the proto-Renaissance painter.
Duccio and assistants (possibly including Simone Martini) spent three years on this massive altarpiece. It was a triumph, and at its dedication the satisfied Sienese marched it around the Campo and into the church in a public procession.
But by 1506, at the height of the Renaissance, Duccio’s medieval altarpiece looked musty and old-fashioned, and was moved to a side altar. In 1771 it was disassembled and stored in the church offices (now the Duomo Museum). Today, scholars debate how to reassemble it accurately and hail it as a quantum leap in the evolution of art.
Room 9, to the left and behind the Maestà, contains wooden models of the Duomo’s inlaid-marble floor and close-ups of the individual floor panels for easier inspection.
• Return to the stairs and continue up. Take a right at the first landing. At the landing just before the top floor, turn right and walk past the rooms, going through the small doorway to the stairwell. Climb down the steps and then up about 60 claustrophobic spiral stairs to the first viewpoint. You can continue up another similar spiral staircase to reach the very top.
Standing on the wall from this high point in the city, you’re rewarded with a stunning view of Siena...and an interesting perspective.
Look toward the Duomo and remember this: To outdo Florence, Siena had planned to enlarge this cathedral by turning it into a transept and constructing an enormous nave (see sidebar on here). You’re standing on top of what would have been the new entrance facade (see map on here). Columns would have stood where you see the rows of white stones in the pavement below. Had the church been completed, you’d be looking straight down the nave toward the altar.