Siena

 Much have I travelled in the realms of gold... Well, a little, in the realm of gold that was the world of 14th-century Sienese art. Yes, I have been to see the great exhibition at the National Gallery – Siena: The Rise of Painting – and it was wonderful. My knowledge of Sienese art was sketchy, and I had somehow formed the impression that it was rather austere and forbidding. As I now know, this is very far from the truth: the Sienese art of this period is often intimate, humane and accessible, clearly feeling its way toward the naturalistic glories of the Renaissance that was to come. 
  The triptych above is by the first great Sienese master, Duccio. In it the Christ child is not much like a human baby, more a Pantocrator in miniature, but he is reaching out to play with his mother's head-dress, seeking, like any baby, to engage her attention. A couple of decades later, Ambrogio Lorenzetti painted his Madonna Del Latte, in which a decidedly real baby sucks happily at a decidedly real breast, and looks out at us, defiantly possessive. 

And here is Simone Martini's rendering of Christ Discovered in the Temple, in which Joseph, having recovered the missing youngster, is all repressed rage, and the young Jesus all surly defiance – a psychologically realistic scene that any parent of an errant child will recognise. 

These paintings have to be seen in the original, not in reproduction, partly because of the prevalence of gold backgrounds, which are often worked into sculptural shapes and decorative surfaces, presenting a rich textured world, not a flat radiance. Their impact is extraordinary, and this exhibition does them justice, with thoughtful hanging and captions that tell us enough but not too much (and not a whiff of woke anywhere). It's an exhibition that feels like a blockbuster but is actually on a fairly small scale. I left it feeling not exhausted but exalted. It was a joy. 
If you want to catch it, it is on for a while yet, until June 22nd.