Pinacoteca Nazionale – Sienese showcase

This major picture gallery displays the finest collection of Sienese art in a suitably Gothic Palazzo. The early rooms are full of madonnas, apple-cheeked, pale, remote or warmly human. Matteo di Giovanni’s stylised Madonnas shift to Lorenzetti’s affectionate Annunciation and Ugolino di Neri’s radiant madonna. Neroccio di Bartolomeo’s Madonna is as truthful as a Masaccio. As a variant, the grisly deaths of obscure saints compete with a huge medieval crucifix with a naturalistic spurt of blood. The famous landscapes and surreal Persian city attributed to Lorenzetti were probably painted by Sassetta a century later. But his Madonna dei Carmelitani is a sweeping cavalcade of Sienese life.