Colours of Siena – The Inside Story

By Judith May Evans

Some years back, I had a dream – that I was sitting in a window, writing, looking out over the Tuscan hills. Where had that come from? Yes, I’d visited Tuscany – the cities of Florence, Pisa and Siena, even ventured into Chianti where so many English have their second homes. But writing? I’d studied science, for goodness sake, what could I offer the literary world? But the dream stayed with me. Slowly I remembered that before I’d been swept up in the pressures of work and family, I’d written plays, my first written at the age of six (no promising genius there, I assure you).  But dip my toe in the literary water as an adult? I hesitated – for at least a year.

Then someone told me of a creative writing workshop at the local college. That’s where I first came across ‘our’ Jacqui and gained a foundation in good storytelling to use in the memoir I started to write. However, memoir was not where I was destined to settle.

A Calling to Tuscany

Then I saw an advert. WRITE AWAY IN THE HILLS OF TUSCANY.  It called to me and I answered. Taking place an hour’s drive from Siena, it introduced me to the small town of Monticiano. It was love at first sight. The medieval cloister, where a retired footballer did his pull ups every morning, the warring bars on the piazza, the smell of pines on the walk through the woods to the ruined abbey of San Galgano. And that’s not even mentioning the food – the best pizza, wild boar pasta, mushrooms in glut after the rains in October, summer fiestas taking over the streets, rehearsals for Siena’s pallio on the local racetrack… Oh how I love you, Siena, let me count the ways. I could go on, but cutting to the chase I lived there half the year for the next sixteen years and was where I wanted to set my books. But what to write? Had anything of note ever happened in the almost-off-the-map Monticiano? Indeed it had.

Colours of Siena

The only remaining fragment of medieval stained glass from one of the town’s two churches had recently been authenticated as the work of Pietro Lorenzetti, one of the great Sienese artists of the fourteenth century. And his brother Ambrogio had painted the frescos in the so-near-I-walked-it abbey of San Galgano. Some story there, surely. These artists are two of the stars of the recent exhibition at London’s National Gallery Siena: The Rise of Painting, 1300-1350 (click here for highlights). I delved deeper, not that there was much to delve, for few researchers showed interest in Siena. But those facts I was able to glean, formed the basis of my first novel Colours of Siena, published in February 2024.

Visiting the National Gallery exhibition, which I’ve done several times, is like being among close friends. For without much in the way of biography to go on, (though I did know that Pietro married the tax officer’s sister, which explains Ambrogio’s magnificent annunciation painted for the tax office that’s in the exhibition), I studied their paintings.

It all started with Duccio

I saw clearly that it all started with Duccio. Florence often claims it founded the Renaissance, but to me that’s like saying the Emperor Constantine started Christianity. Certainly without the Medici sponsoring art, we would not have all those treasures people queue to see in the Florence’s Uffizzi gallery. But these Sienese guys (my guys!) paved the way. Literally. Their handling of the intricate floor tiling demonstrates a mastery of perspective well before the Florentines made it their own. But then I’m biased.

The exhibition brought together paintings from all over the world including from private collections – a ‘once in a century exhibition’, to quote its curator, and shows just how radical these Sienese painters were. Duccio’s faces, compared to the Byzantine art that came before, ooze humanity. Not just saints with halos, but realistic faces one could imagine walking the streets today. Pietro and another of the group, Simone Martini, continued and built on his legacy, the latter becoming artist to the Pope in Avignon, surely one of the plum jobs in Europe at the time.

But the man for me was Ambrogio, who always pushed the boundaries. This was shown in the exhibition with his Madonna del Latte, showing the Virgin breast-feeding the baby Jesus.

He experiments with conveying differences in time in another painting, Saint Nicholas resuscitates a Boy strangled by the Devil.  Most radical of all, easily overlooked because of its simplicity, is his initial drawing for an Annunciation at San Galgano. This red ink drawing was hidden for years underneath an awkward but traditional depiction of Mary – humble, grateful to be chosen. Instead, the picture he planned is arresting, shocking even, for this Mary is terrified. What had led Ambrogio to this interpretation, I wondered?

And what had led to it being covered up? An answer, dear reader, is in my book.

Bringing the painters to life

My central character is Clara, a young servant in one of the city’s most powerful households. She’s mesmerised by the vibrant colours and sheer magnificence of Duccio’s greatest painting, the Maestà (which got a whole room at the exhibition), when it’s first paraded round Siena’s Campo. A chance encounter with Ambrogio takes her to Duccio’s studio, where she tries out painting and her mission to work with colour is born. The book follows her as she tries to fulfil that dream.

For the true triumph of these artists, as amply demonstrated in the exhibition, is their mastery of colour. And this is what makes them and the exhibition so special. Unlike their Byzantine predecessors, these paintings ooze life. And that’s what I hope my book does too, making these painters live and breathe as fully as they did in their paintings.

The National Gallery’s exhibition: Siena: The Rise of Painting, 1300-1350 has now ended. But, please click here to see highlights.

More about Judith

Judith May Evans was a company director until a vivid dream showed her writing in Tuscany. Sienese Monticiano was love at first sight, and the village became her writing home for sixteen years. Her discovery of the renowned Lorenzetti brothers’ artwork, inspired ‘Colours of Siena’, her debut novel, the first of a trilogy set around Siena. A traveller to some 150 countries, she is mother of two, grandmother of four, a year-round outdoor-pool swimmer, and lives in London.

To buy Colours of Siena from Amazon click here and available to order from bookshops.

Colours of Siena: Longlisted for the Historical Writers Association 2024 Debut Crown

“A vivid drama of medieval Siena with an inspiring heroine and a striking and evocative exploration of the life and work of an artist at the dawn of the renaissance.”

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