Ambrogio Lorenzetti

With Simone Martini, Ambrogio and Pietro Lorenzetti were the most important Sienese painters after the death of Duccio. The two brothers pursued independent careers: they do not appear to have maintained a joint workshop or collaborated regularly. Ambrogio is presumed to be the younger, but there is no evidence as to his date of birth. An attributed painting from Vico l’Abate (now in the Museo d’Arte Sacra in San Casciano in Val di Pesa) is dated 1319. He seems to have worked a good deal in Florence (some of his goods were seized for debt there in 1321, he sold some land there in 1324, and in about 1329-30 he was admitted to the Arte de’ Medici e Speziali). After Simone Martini’s departure for Avignon, Ambrogio seems to have replaced him as the chief painter to the Sienese Commune. His frescoes of ‘Roman Stories’ on the exterior of the Palazzo Pubblico (1337) and famous rotary wall map for the Sala del Mappamondo (1345) are lost, but his allegorical frescoes of Good and Bad Government in the Sala della Pace are the most important cycle of secular paintings left from the Middle Ages. A summary of his will, dated 9 June 1348, and notices of the sale of his property in 1349 and 1350 suggest that he died of the Black Death, which ravaged Siena in 1348-49.

The Lorenzetti were influenced by the sculpture of Giovanni Pisano and by the contemporary Florentine work of Giotto and his followers. Their art is less traditionally Byzantine than Duccio’s. It is more naturalistic, and shows a marked advance in the treatment of space and perspective. The bulky forms of their figures, found particularly in their later works, are in contrast to the slender, graceful, more Gothic forms of Simone Martini. For Lorenzo Ghiberti, the Florentine sculptor writing around 1450, Ambrogio Lorenzetti was ‘a most perfect master, a man of great genius … a most noble designer’.


Asciano (30 km southeast of Siena). Museo d’Arte Sacra (Palazzo Corboli).
Saint Michael Triptych. Wood, 258 x 230.
The centre panel (110 x 90) shows the Archangel Michael, in splendid Roman armour, swooping down on multi-coloured wings to slay the seven-headed dragon described in the Book of Revelation. The triangular pinnacle above shows a half-length Madonna and Child. The side panels contain full-length figures of St Bartholomew (with knife and book) and St Benedict (in the white habit of the Olivetan or Cistercian monastic orders), and the side pinnacles contain bust-length figures of St John the Evangelist (with quill and book) and St Louis of Toulouse (partly effaced). (The St Bartholomew was later transformed into a St James by the addition of a pilgrim's staff (since removed).) There are no certain early references to the triptych, which came from the monastery of San Cristoforo a Rofeno in the village of Badia a Rofeno, near Asciano. It is conceivably identical with the 'panel made by Ambrogio at the end of his life' recorded by Vasari at Monte Oliveto di Chiusuri, which is not far from Badia a Rofeno. It was published as a work of Ambrogio Lorenzetti only in 1912 (by Giacomo De Nicola in the Italian journal Vite d'Arte). There were restorations in 1910, 1950, 1996 and 2011. During the thorough 2011 restoration, the panels were removed from an ornate sixteenth-century frame carved by Fra Raffaele da Brescia. The simple original frame, with rudimentary painted decoration, was revealed largely intact.
  
Birmingham. City Art Gallery.
Head of a Franciscan Friar. Fresco, 32 x 28.
This small fragment of fresco is thought to be one of a number of such fragments sold off in the late nineteenth century by the convent of San Francesco at Siena. There are three other fragments (one attributed to Ambrogio Lorenzetti and the other two to Pietro Lorenzetti) in the National Gallery, London. Bequeathed in 1960 by the archaeologist Sir Leonard Woolley.   

Boston. Fine Arts Museum.
Virgin and Child. Wood, 76 x 45.
The touchingly intimate composition – the Madonna holding the Child by his feet and thighs and pressing him to her so their cheeks touch – is very similar to that of the centre panel of the Santa Petronilla Altarpiece (Siena Pinacoteca). The panel may date from the late 1330s or early 1340s. It came from the former Benedictine abbey church of Sant’Eugenio (3 km beyond the Porta San Marco at Siena), which was acquired by the Griccioli family in 1812 for use as a villa (Villa di Monastero). The Griccioli sold the picture to Dan Fellows Platt of New Jersey in 1904, and the museum bought it from Platt’s widow for $15,000 in 1939. The panel had been radically restored by the Sienese painter and forger Icilio Federico Joni, who had added a steep pointed gable. It has now been returned to its original dimensions and shape. 

Budapest. Fine Arts Museum.
Madonna. Wood, 85 x 58.
The Latin text inscribed on the scroll held by the Christ Child is from John: 13, 24 ('A new commandment I give you: Love one another'). A fragment of a much larger panel, which probably had three arches with saints at either side. Sometimes ascribed to a follower. One of many early Sienese works acquired by the Hungarian bishop and historian Arnold Ipolyi in 1867, when the collection of the German painter Johann Anton Ramboux was auctioned at Cologne. Presented to the Budapest museum in 1872.

Cambridge (Mass.). Fogg Art Museum.
Crucifixion. Wood, 68 x 35.
Christ on the cross is mourned by two wailing angels. The mourners in the left foreground include the swooning Virgin (attended by two Holy Women), Mary Magdalene (who flings her arms wide as she gazes up at the crucified Christ) and John the Evangelist (who wrings his hands with grief as he looks down at the Virgin). Two of the mounted soldiers' banners carry the inscription SPQR (standing for the Senate and People of Rome). The panel was probably the right half of a diptych. According to Zeri (1971), the left half was the Virgin and Child enthroned with Saints in Berlin, which is attributed to Pietro Lorenzetti. (The two panels correspond in size and in their stamped border ornamentation.) Given to the museum by Paul J. Sachs, the investment banker and associate director of the Fogg, in 1939.
Saint Agnes. Wood, 37 x 25.
The early Christian virgin-martyr is identified by her usual emblem of a lamb. This tiny triangular panel was presumably a pinnacle from an altarpiece. Acquired in Siena by Charles Fairfax Murray in about 1880. It first entered the museum as an indefinite loan in 1911 and was donated by Edward Waldo Forbes, the Harvard art historian and director of the Fogg, in 1953. The museum also has a remarkably convincing modern copy, which was made in the 1920s by a student of Forbes called Arthur Everett ('Chick') Austin. 

Copenhagen. Statens Museum for Kunst.
Saint John the Baptist. Wood, 52 x 47.
The inscription on the scroll ('Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world') is from John 1: 29. It has been recently suggested (by Sonia Chiodo in Arte Cristiana (2003)) that this triangular panel was a pinnacle of the altarpiece painted by Ambrogio Lorenzetti in 1342 for the altar dedicated to St Crescentius in Siena Cathedral. The main panel, representing the Presentation of the Virgin, is in the Uffizi, but none of the other parts of the altarpiece has been certainly traced.

El Paso (Texas). Museum of Art.
Madonna. Wood, 53 x 35.
The history of this picture can be traced back only to1912, when it was acquired (as a work of Lippo Memmi) by Philip Lehman of New York from a picture restorer in Florence. It was acquired by Samuel H. Kress in 1943 and donated to the El Paso Museum in 1961. The attribution to Ambrogio Lorenzetti dates back to Mason Perkins (Art in America (1920)). It has sometimes been rejected in favour of a close follower, but attribution is made difficult by the picture’s poor condition. The frame is original.

Florence. Uffizi.
*Presentation in the Temple. Wood, 257 x 168.
The aged Simeon holds the Child. On the right stands the eighty-four year old prophetess Anna, who holds a scroll with a verse from St Luke’s Gospel: ‘And she coming in that instant gave thanks likewise unto the Lord, and spake of him to all that looked for redemption in Jerusalem’. On the left stand Joseph, Mary and two female attendants. The doves held by the priest were part of the ritual purification required by Mosaic law. The perspective is remarkably sophisticated. The lines of the floor tiles converge roughly to a single vanishing point. The frame gives the sense of a portal admitting the spectator into the interior of a Gothic church. In the spandrels at the top are figures of the Prophets Moses (referring to the law of purification) and Malachi (whose scroll is inscribed with the prophecy: 'the Lord, whom you seek, shall suddenly come to his temple'.) Restoration in 1985-86 revealed the unexpected brilliance of the colours. The Presentation was the centre panel of an altarpiece commissioned for an altar dedicated to St Crescentius in Siena Cathedral. The altar was in the right transept, where Matteo Preti’s Preaching of St Bernardino stands today. According to a fifteenth-century inventory, the altarpiece also included side panels of SS. Crescentius and Michael and a predella. It is signed and dated 1342 on the horizontal border along the bottom edge.
It was one of a cycle of four Marian altarpieces that once furnished side altars in Siena Cathedral. Simone Martini's famous Annunciation (also in the Uffizi) is from the same cycle, as is Pietro Lorenzetti’s Birth of the Virgin (dated 1342 and now in the Cathedral Museum). The fourth altarpiece – an Adoration of the Shepherds by the lesser known Bartolommeo Bulgarini – has not been certainly traced, but a Nativity in the Fogg Museum at Cambridge (Mass.) could be a fragment of the central panel. 
The Presentation remained in situ until 1651, when the altar of St Crescentius was demolished. It was transferred to the Florence Accademia in 1822 from the Spedale di Monna Agnese. It has been suggested (probably wrongly) that the Allegory of the Redemption (Siena Pinacoteca), which also came from the Spedale, formed part of the predella. A triangular panel of Saint John the Baptist at Copenhagen has been recently identified as one of the pinnacles.
*Triptych: Madonna and Child and Saints.
The altarpiece is from the ancient little Florentine church of San Procolo, on Via dei Giraldi, where it was seen by Ghiberti and Vasari. According to an inscription, now lost but recorded in a guidebook of 1667, it was painted in 1332. The wings (141 x 43) represent half-figures of St Nicholas of Bari and St Proculus; the two bishop saints are identified by inscriptions on their haloes. There are small figures of St John the Evangelist and John the Baptist in the pinnacles. The two panels were transferred to the Uffizi in 1947 from the Bandini Museum in Fiesole. The triptych was recomposed in 1959 when the centre panel (171 x 56) of the Madonna and Child (with the Redeemer in the pinnacle) was presented by Bernard Berenson. There was originally also a predella. The three panels had become much darkened by dirt, old varnish and discoloured repaint; a restoration was announced in 2014 and completed in 2017.
*Four Scenes from the Life of St Nicholas of Bari. Two panels, each 96 x 53.
St NIcholas of Bari was one of the most venerated saints of the Middle Ages, and there are many cycles of his life on panel and in fresco. Very little is known of the historical St Nicholas, a fourth-century Bishop of Myra in ancient Lycia, and the four episodes illustrated here are all found in the thirteenth-century Golden Legend. 
The top half of one panel depicts the famous legend of the Charity of St Nicholas. The saint secretly puts gold through the window of a man too poor to afford dowries for his three unmarried daughters. (There is another, even smaller version of this subject by Ambrogio Lorenzetti in the Louvre.) The bottom part of the panel shows the Ordination of St Nicholas. One of the prelates who had gathered to elect a new Bishop of Myra heard a voice in the night telling him to choose the first man named Nicholas to enter the church. Nicholas, dressed in red, is shown both at the entrance of the church and then kneeling at the altar.
The top half of the second panel depicts the posthumous miracle of St Nicholas raising a Boy from the Dead. On St Nicholas's Feast Day, while his family were celebrating, the boy gave alms to the Devil, who had turned up at the door disguised as a pilgrim (top left). The Devil strangled the boy (bottom left), but the victim's father prayed to St Nicholas, who raised the boy from the dead (lower right). The lower half of the panel depicts the Miracle of the Grain Ships. During a famine in Myra, Nicholas persuaded sailors shipping produce to the Imperial granaries in Constantinople to donate a ration of one hundred pecks of grain to prevent the population starving. The ships were miraculously replenished and arrived at their destination with full cargoes of grain.     
The panels came from San Procolo, and were probably painted in about 1332. Vasari says that this ‘life of St Nicholas in small figures … enormously increased [Ambrogio’s] name and reputation’. The panels probably formed part of some larger structure. There is evidence that they were fitted with hinges, suggesting that they could have formed the wings of a folding triptych. The central panel might have shown a figure of the saint. According to Ghiberti, Ambrogio also frescoed a chapel in San Procolo and painted an Annunciation for the ‘Scala where the foundlings are kept’. After the church was closed by Grand Duke Pietro Leopoldo in 1778, the St Nicholas scenes and side panels from Ambrogio’s triptych were moved to the Florentine Badia. Transferred thence to the Accademia in 1810.

Frankfurt. Städel Museum.
Crucifixion, Four Saints and Nativity. Wood, 59 x 39.
The main scene is the Crucifixion. Mary Magdalene clasps the foot of the cross, and the Virgin and St John the Evangelist stand at the sides. In strips to the right and left of the scene, four saints are represented. John the Baptist holds his scroll (inscribed 'ECCE AGNIV (sic) DEI QUI TOLLIT') and Bartholomew displays his flayed skin. The two female saints are harder to identify, but they could be Catherine of Alexandria and Helen or Cecilia. The Nativity is represented across the lower third of the panel. The Virgin and Joseph adore the infant in the stable, while the shepherds are led to them by a host of golden angels and, across a winding stream, an angel brings the good news to shepherds resting on a hillside. The painting was acquired by the museum in 1865 from the Frankfurt Historical and Antiquarian Society. It has been variously attributed to Ambrogio Lorenzetti, his workshop and his school. It was included as an autograph work in the Ambrogio Lorenzetti exhibition held at Siena in 2017-18.

London. National Gallery.
Heads of Nuns. Fresco, roughly 59 x 52.
A small, irregular-shaped fragment of a large wall fresco, the subject of which may have been Poor Clares weeping over the body of St Francis. The fragment is well preserved, though only traces of brown pigment remain on the nuns' tunics. The fragment comes from San Francesco at Siena. Ambrogio Lorenzetti is said by Ghiberti and Vasari to have painted frescoes in the cloister of the convent, but the fragment appears to have come from the Chapter House. It was recovered from whitewash and cut out of the wall in about 1855 by the maestro di casa, who sold it to the National Gallery (through Fairfax Murray) in 1878 for £45. Two large Franciscan scenes are still at San Francesco (preserved in the church). There are two other small fresco fragments from San Francesco in the National Gallery; these are attributed to Pietro Lorenzetti. There are another two fragments, one attributed to Ambrogio and the other to Pietro, in the Museo Diocesano at Siena. 

Massa Marittima. Palazzo Comunale.
*Madonna with Saints and Virtues. Wood, 150 x 205.
The enthroned Virgin and Child are flanked by two pairs of angels – one pair holding the ends of the plush cushion on which the Virgin sits and the other pair holding bunches of red and white roses and white lilies. The three Theological Virtues, identified by Latin inscriptions, are seated on the steps of the throne. Their iconography is unusual: Faith, on the bottom step, holds a mirror with an image of the Trinity (a dove is faintly incised above a head with two faces); Hope, on the second step, holds a tall tower with a small crown floating above it; and Charity, on the top step, holds a flaming heart and spear. Angels, kneeling on either side of the throne, swing golden censers and play musical instruments (viols, a portable organ and a lute). They are among the first angel musicians in Italian art. Behind is a great company of saints, patriarchs and prophets. On the left, one can identify Catherine of Alexandria (with wheel), Francis (displaying the stigmata on his hands), Paul (with sword), Peter (with key) and John the Evangelist (writing his Gospel). The local patron saint Cerbone is shown on the extreme right with his gaggle of geese. There are about 120 figures in all.
The panel was the central part of a large polyptych, which stood originally on the high altar of Massa Cathedral. The original Gothic frame, with its pinnacles, pilasters and predella, has long since disappeared. The picture is mentioned by Ghiberti and Vasari, who say that Ambrogio also frescoed a chapel in Massa. The painting then disappeared from view for three centuries. It was rediscovered in 1867 in the attic of the priory of the Augustinian Hermits in the città nuova. It is said to have been cut into five parts and used as a container for ashes. The picture was probably commissioned for the high altar of an Augustinian church in Massa Marittima – either Sant’Agostino or the nearby San Pietro all’Orto. It may have been painted shortly after Massa's submission to Siena in 1335. 

Milan. Brera.
Virgin and Child. Wood, 85 x 57.
The Virgin, almost in profile, holds the tightly swaddled baby, who seems to be struggling to move his hand and feet. Usually considered quite early (1320s). Perhaps originally the central panel of a polyptych. Damaged by cleaning: the faces have lost their final paint layers and the gold ground is also very worn. While the blue pigment has largely disappeared, the floral pattern on the Virgin's mantle is still visible. Acquired in Siena at the end of the nineteenth century by Nadine Helbig, a cultured Russian aristocrat living in Rome. Donated to the Brera in 1947 by the wealthy Milanese art collector Guido Cagnola, who had owned the picture for some forty years.

Montenero d'Orcia (44 km northeast of Grosseto). Pieve di Santa Lucia.
Crucifix. Wood, 210 x 164. 
At the top of the cross, a pelican (or swan?) draws blood from its breast to feed its young, who are threatened by a snake. The grieving Virgin and St John are depicted at the ends of the arms of the cross. The figure of Christ is similar to that in the damaged crucifix from the Carmine at Siena (now in the Siena gallery). The Montenero crucifix came to notice in 1925, when it was included with an attribution to Ambrogio Lorenzetti in a Mostra d'Arte Antica held at Montalcino. It is much damaged, with a large area of paint loss caused by a crack running down the right side of the cross. (An old photograph, published in the July-December 1966 issue of Bullettino d'Arte, shows the crucifix in a very sorry state, with the right arm of the cross detached.) It was restored for an exhibition held at Grosseto in 1964 and restored again for the major Ambrogio Lorenzetti exhibition held at Siena in 2017-18.  

Montesiepi (30 km south-west of Siena). Oratory of San Galgano.
Scenes from the Life of St Galgano; Annunciation; Maestà. Frescoes.
St Galgano Guidotti was a twelfth-century knight from Chiusdino (a small castello near Montesiepi), who renounced his errant ways after witnessing a vision of the Archangel Michael and lived the rest of his life as a pious hermit subsisting on wild grass and herbs. The great Cistercian abbey of San Galgano was built near the site of his hermitage. It was abandoned by the monks in 1652 and is now a roofless ruin. The frescoes are in the small chapel attached to the oratory (hermitage or rotonda) on the hill above. The cycle, painted largely a secco, is damaged and incomplete.
Five scenes survive. The first, on the left wall to the right of the window, depicts St Michael appearing to St Galgano at Rome. Galgano, holding a pilgrim's staff, stares at the archangel, who stands on the ramparts of the Castel Sant'Angelo sheathing his sword. The scene in the lunette above has been interpreted either as St Galgano following St Michael to Montesiepi or as St Michael leading Galgano the Heaven after his Death. Galgano holds the stone in which he had thrust his sword to make a cross. A Procession of Saints is shown in the opposite lunette. King David (holding a large psaltery) is followed by Andrew (with cross), Stephen (with stones embedded in his head), Pope Fabian (with sword) and Ursula (with arrow). The right half of the fresco is lost. The Annunciation is depicted either side of the window on the end wall. The Maestà is in the lunette above. Angels offer baskets of flowers to the Virgin, who is flanked by Saints Paul, John the Baptist, John the Evangelist and Peter. Eve, holding a fig branch, reclines in front of the throne, while two allegorical female figures (one with a large basket and a small bunch of flowers and the other holding a heart) kneel at the sides with Cistercians and other saints. 
The frescoes were almost unknown until 1904, when the American art historian Frederick Mason Perkins published the first photographs of them and attributed them to Ambrogio Lorenzetti. The attribution has been generally accepted, though Ambrogio appears to have left the execution largely to his workshop. The frescoes may have been commissioned by Vanni Salimbeni, a prominent Sienese citizen, who made a bequest to the chapel in his will of 1 June 1340. An alternative, somewhat earlier dating is suggested by a guidebook, written in 1645 by a former abbot of San Galgano, which describes the chapel as having an altarpiece bearing the date 1336.
When the Annunciation was detached from the wall in 1966, a beautiful sinopia was revealed – now displayed on a side wall of the chapel – which shows the Virgin shrinking to the floor and hugging a column. It is thought that the fresco itself, with its more orthodox composition, may have been reworked by another artist in the second half of the fourteenth century. The detached frescoes were restored for the Ambrogio Lorenzetti exhibition held in Siena in 2017-18.

New Haven. Yale University Art Gallery.
St Martin and the Beggar. Wood, 30 x 20.
The fourth-century bishop-monk Martin of Tours was one of the most popular saints of the Middle Ages. According to the famous legend, he cut his cloak in half to clothe a nearly naked beggar at Amiens. In the early twentieth century this small panel had a variety of attributions (Simone Martini, follower of Bartolo di Fredi and Lippi Vanni). The attribution to Ambrogio Lorenzetti was made in 1951 by Federico Zeri, who suggested that the panel was a companion piece to the Charity of St Nicholas in the Louvre. The two panels were probably the wings of a portable triptych, with the St Martin on the right. According to Moran and Seymour (Yale University Art Bulletin, 1967), the centre panel was the ‘Small Maestà’ in the Siena Gallery. From the huge collection of ‘Italian primitives’ formed in Florence in the mid-nineteenth century by James Jackson Jarves and sold to the college in 1871.

New York. Metropolitan Museum.
Madonna and Child. Wood, 94 x 56.
Greatly damaged. The Virgin’s face is perhaps the best-preserved part. The gold background (gesso, gilding and tooling) is almost entirely a modern reconstruction by the Sienese restorer (and forger) Icilio Federico Joni. The Child originally held a bird (goldfinch?). Recorded in 1862 on the altar of the Cappella di San Francesco at Pompana, near Murla. Removed secretly from the chapel by 1924, when it was with Durlacher Brothers of London. Acquired shortly afterwards by George Blumenthal of New York, who bequeathed it to the Metropolitan Museum in 1941.

Paris. Louvre.
*The Charity of St Nicholas of Bari. Wood, 30 x 20.
The little panel illustrates the famous legend of St Nicholas's anonymous act of charity towards a man who had fallen on hard times and could not afford dowries for his three unmarried daughters. To save the girls from prostitution, the saint went to the poor man's house under cover of darkness and threw a purse of gold through the window. The same subject is treated by Ambrogio Lorenzetti on a somewhat larger scale in a panel at the Uffizi. The Louvre panel was probably a fragment of the left wing of a small triptych, which had as its right wing the St Martin in the Yale University Gallery. The ‘Small Maestà’ in the Siena Gallery may have been the centre panel. Sold by Don Raoul Duseigneur to the Louvre in 1916. Probably the picture of ‘three sleeping children on a bed with a father and a saint …’ recorded in 1830 (with an attribution to Simone Martini) in the possession of Carlo Lasinio, who combined his position as keeper of the Campo Santo at Pisa with a lucrative business as a picture dealer. An inscription on the back gives Lasinio’s name and an attribution to ‘Simon Memmi’.
Virgin and Child. Wood, 122 x 54.
The Child bites into a fig. In a trefoil moulding in the pinnacle, a tiny Crucifixion with the Virgin and St John the Evangelist. This panel was presumably the centre of a polyptych, but no companion panels have been identified. It was in the hands of the Parisian auctioneer Pierre-Émile Lecoq in the late nineteenth century, and was later in a private collection in Bourgogne. It was unknown to art historians before 1998, when it was acquired by the Louvre from the Éric Turquin gallery in Paris.

Roccalbegna (35 km east of Grosseto). Santi Pietro e Paolo.
Madonna and Child; St Peter; St Paul. Wood.
The panels are displayed over the main altar of the small fourteenth-century stone church. The centre panel has been cut down at the bottom and sides. The enthroned Madonna would have been flanked by saints. The jar, red robe and halo of Mary Magdalene are just visible at the right edge, and the palm and halo of a martyr saint are visible on the left. The Child holds bunches of red cherries in each hand. The saints in the two side panels are seated on thrones with lions' heads. St Peter holds his key and a crosier. A dove whispers into the ear of St Paul, who holds his sword, while writing an epistle with his right hand. It is uncertain whether the three panels formed a triptych or were parts of a larger polyptych (or even whether they belonged to the same altarpiece). The panels do not appear to have been described in print until 1911, and they remain among the least known of the works attributed to Ambrogio Lorenzetti. Restored in 1955 and 2006.       

San Casciano in Val di Pesa. Museo d’Arte Sacra.
Virgin and Child ('Madonna di Vico l'Abate'). Wood, 190 x 160.
The Madonna's simple, box-like throne is decorated with geometric inlay. She is severely hieratic – monumental, impassive and rigidly frontal. The Child, in contrast, is naturalistic and lively, moving his hands and kicking his feet. The picture was discovered in the church of Sant’Angelo in Vico l’Abate, near Florence, and published as a work of Ambrogio Lorenzetti in 1910 by Carlo Gamba. It bears the date 1319 and is believed to be Ambrogio's earliest surviving work. The inscription states that it was commissioned by a certain Bernardo for the soul of his father, Burnaccio, of Tolano, which is very near Vico l’Abate. The picture has been exhibited in the museum since 1984. It was restored in 2017. Red repaint on the Virgin's dress was removed, revealing traces of the original blue. Repaint on her blue mantle was retained, however, as little of the original colour remains.

Siena. Pinacoteca Nazionale.
*‘Santa Petronilla Altarpiece’ (no. 77-77c).
These six panels came from the convent of Santa Petronilla at Siena – formerly the church of the Umiliati. They were framed together, possibly in the eighteenth century, as a polyptych – the three panels representing the Madonna and Child and two half-length females saints above, the long horizontal Lamentation over the Dead Christ below, and the two full-length St Johns at the sides. The original arrangement of the panels is unrecorded. It is not even absolutely certain that they are all from the same altarpiece. The naturalistic Madonna and Child (101 x 56) was clearly a centre panel. The curly haired infant holds a scroll with a text from Luke’s Gospel (‘Blessed are the poor …’) suitable to the Umiliati Order. Mary Magdalene (87 x 41) is identified by the jar of precious ointment she is holding. The bleeding face of Christ is emblazoned on her heart. The other female saint (87 x 42), holding a nosegay and with flowers in her lap, is usually called Dorothy but has recently been identified as Martha. The full-length figures of St John the Evangelist and the Baptist (128 x 42/43) may have been executed, in part at least, by Ambrogio’s workshop. The dramatic but damaged Lamentation (50 x 140) was presumably part of a predella. Probably comparatively late (late 1330s or early 1340s).
‘La Madonna di Rapolano’ (no. 605). Wood, 100 x 58.
The Child holds a goldfinch by its wing. The pose of the Madonna and Child – she holding him close so their cheeks touch – is similar to that of the Madonna in the Santa Petronilla Altarpiece. First recorded in 1863 in the casa canonica (rectory) of the church of San Lorenzo at Serre, a little town eight kilometres south of Rapolano. It came to notice in 1904, when it was included in the exhibition Antica Arte Senese held at the Palazzo Pubblico. It is probably quite late (about 1340-44), and may have been the central panel of a polyptych. It was restored in the early 1930s, when it was transferred to the pinacoteca, and restored again in the early 1990s. The lower part of the panel is somewhat damaged and repainted. 
*Madonna and Child with Angels and Saints (‘Small Maestà’). Wood, 50 x 34.
The Madonna is surrounded by six angels and six saints. The female saint on the left, holding red and white roses in her skirts, has been called Dorothy, but is probably Elizabeth of Hungary. Catherine of Alexandria, on the right, is identified by her spiked wheel and martyr's palm. The two bishop saints could by Nicholas of Bari and Martin of Tours, and the two papal saints (robed in red) could be Clement I and Gregory the Great. The earliest record of this exquisite small panel is in a pinacoteca list of 1816. It was probably the central part of a small portable triptych. The wings were possibly the Episode from the Life of St Nicholas (Louvre) and the St Martin and the Beggar (Yale University Gallery). Probably late (1340s).
*Annunciation. Wood, 130 x 150.
In the centre of the two arches, Christ blessing. Signed and dated 17 December 1344, and the latest work by Ambrogio that can be securely dated. From the Sala del Concistoro in the Palazzo Pubblico. Sometimes called the ‘Madonna dei Donzelli’ because in the eighteenth century it hung in the young women’s dining room, near the kitchens. It seems to have been commissioned for the offices of the Biccherna (exchequer). As well as Ambrogio’s signature and the date, the inscription along the bottom gives the names of tax officials – the camarlingo (treasurer, one Don Francesco, a monk of San Galgano), three esecutori (executors) and a scrittore (scribe). It has been suggested that the subject is actually the ‘Annunciation of the Death of the Virgin’ as the angel holds a palm rather than a lily. The angel originally had large folded wings down her back, which were painted out by a restorer. The strange backward gesture with his thumb probably means ‘not I but He who sent me’. The perspective of the floor tiles (with its approximation to a true vanishing point in the centre of the picture) is remarkable.
Allegory of the Redemption. Wood, 57 x 118.
This damaged and darkened panel, which came from the convent of Monna Agnese, has been attributed either to Ambrogio or Pietro Lorenzetti. The title is probably modern, and is sometimes expanded to 'An Allegory of Sin and Redemption'. The strange, mystical composition shows: Adam and Eve and their expulsion from the Garden (upper left); Cain killing Abel (lower left); the Crucifixion with corpses piled beneath the cross (centre); and the Last Judgement (right). Death, represented as a black devil with bat wings and holding a scythe, flies by Adam and Eve and hovers over the Crucifixion. The four large cartouches are blank and it is uncertain whether they ever contained inscriptions. The purpose of the panel is uncertain. There are three theories. One is that the panel was an independent devotional work of art. Another is that the panel was a preparatory work for a large fresco or mural. The third is that it was the centre panel of an unusually large predella. It has been suggested, specifically and probably wrongly, that it belonged to the predella of the altarpiece of the Presentation of the Virgin in the Uffizi, which shares the same provenance – the Spedale di Monna Agnese (a hospice for pregnant widows and shamed women).
Two Small Landscapes ('Town by the Sea' and 'Castle by the Sea'). Wood, 22 x 33.
The purpose of these two small panels (just eight inches high and one foot wide) is unknown. They seem unlikely to have been conceived as independent works of art, and could have decorated a wooden chest or be fragments cut from a larger panel. Enzo Carli (1954) suggested that they belonged to the furniture of some public building, and represented the harbour town of Talamare and the Lake of Montepulciano as the western and eastern limits of Sienese terriority. They have been claimed as possibly the earliest examples of pure landscape painting in Italian art. However, a significant segment of opinion (beginning with George Rowley's 1958 monograph) has rejected the attribution to Ambrogio Lorenzetti and dated the panels to the fifteenth rather than the fourteenth century. One theory (proposed by Federico Zeri in 1973) is that they were cut from the background of the lost central panel of Sassetta’s Arte della Lana Altarpiece (1423-26). Another theory links them with a painting of Monte Argentario by Francesco di Bartolomeo Alfei that was paid for by the magistrates of Siena in 1455. 
Crucifixion (no. 598). Wood, 266 x 211.
This large, very damaged crucifix is from the former convent of San Niccolò al Carmine at Siena. It was transferred to the Belle Arti in 1862, but was ignored for many years. It was restored in 1937, and published in 1939 (by Pèleo Bacci) as a work of Pietro Lorenzetti. An attribution to Ambrogio (proposed in 1951 by Carlo Volpe) is now generally preferred. The crucifix was damaged by rainwater when in the  church, and there are large paint losses affecting both the body of Christ and the gilded decoration of the background. The face of Christ has been spared, but not the top of his head. A restoration in 1953-55 removed all old repaint, leaving the bare wood exposed in many places. A new restoration, carried out in 2020-23, has concealed most of the losses with retouching. The wide gilded frame is original, but the crucifix has lost its top (possibly depicting God the Father, Christ blessing or the pelican feeding its young), the terminals at the ends of the arms (probably showing the grieving Virgin and St John) and the base (possibly depicting Adam's skull). The crucifix may date from around 1328-30, when the Carmine was refurnished and Pietro Lorenzetti produced his polyptych for the church.   
Saint Paul; Saint John the Baptist. Wood, each 103 x 36.
Half-length figures. St Paul is shown in profile, his sword in one hand and a pen in the other. John the Baptist holds his baptismal bowl in one hand and scroll in other other; the top half of the head of a man being baptised appears at the bottom edge. The Lion of St Mark is depicted in the pinnacle of the Saint Paul and the Angel of St Matthew in the pinnacle of the Baptist. The two panels, obviously from a polyptych, came from the ex-convent of Santa Marta (founded in 1328) at Siena. 

Siena. Palazzo Pubblico.
Sala della Pace.
**Good and Bad Government. Frescoes.
The complicated allegory on the wall opposite the window shows the Commune of Siena, personified as a majestic old man enthroned with a sceptre and holding a golden shield with an image of the Virgin (now effaced). Above his head hover Faith (carrying a cross), Charity (holding a flaming heart and arrow) and Hope (gazing up into the heavens where appears the face of Christ). Enthroned beside him are Justice (guided by Wisdom who floats above her head), Temperance (with a hour glass), Magnanimity, Prudence (pointing to flames in a dish), Fortitude (with sceptre and shield) and Peace (holding an olive branch). The twenty-four members of the council, who are clearly painted from life, advance towards the throne, holding a rope leading to Concord, a beautiful woman sitting below Justice. Justice is dispensed through two winged figures: one (Distributive Justice) crowns a kneeling figure and beheads another and the other (Communative Justice) gives money to a merchant and a lance and sword to a nobleman. The famous reclining figure of Peace is derived from a fragment of a Roman sarcophagus, now in the Palazzo Pubblico. On the lower border of the fresco is a Latin inscription in beautiful Gothic lettering: 'Ambrogio Lorenzetti of Siena painted this on both sides'. 
The other two frescoes in the room are more damaged. Early chroniclers called them Peace and War. The modern titles, the Effects of Good and Bad Government, derive from a 1792 poem by Luigi Lanzi. A city of peaceful commerce and pleasure is contrasted with a ruined city of bloodshed, and a spring and summer countryside of plenty is contrasted with a winter countryside of barren fields. Securitas, a beautiful female, floats above the well-governed city. Her scroll reads: ‘Every man can travel freely without fear, and each can till and sow, so long as the Commune keeps this lady as sovereign for she has stripped the wicked of all power’. The first ten feet or so of the fresco, to the left of the dancers, have been reworked by a later artist. Tyranny, a monster with tusks and horns, presides over the ill-governed city, flanked by Cruelty, Deceit (holding a sheep with scorpion’s tail), Fraud, Fury, Division (with a saw) and War (in black armour), while winged Avarice, Pride and Vainglory hover above.
The frescoes were commissioned by the Consiglio del Nove – the council of nine elected merchants and bankers that met in the room. Payments to Ambrogio Lorenzetti, totalling 357 lire, 11 soldi and 4 denari, are recorded between 26 February 1338 and 29 May 1339. It is clear from the efforts made to preserve them that the frescoes continued to be held in high regard long after the rule of the Nove ended in 1355. Restoration work was carried out in 1360-85 (by Andrea Vanni), in 1492 (by Pietro di Francesco Orioli), in 1518 (by Girolamo di Benvenuto) and in 1521 (by Lorenzo di Francesco).
A major new restoration, the first since 1987, began in May 2022. 
Sala dei Pilastri (or delle Colonne).
Saint Michael. Stained glass, 82 x 62.
The figure of the archangel, slaying a snake-like devil with his sword, has been attributed to Ambrogio Lorenzetti.  

Siena, Museo dell’Opera del Duomo.
Four panels of Saints. Wood, 110 x 44.
Half-length figures of SS. Catherine, Benedict, Francis and Mary Magdalene, with small busts of John the Baptist, Paul and two Evangelists in the pinnacles. The four panels may have belonged originally to a five-part polyptych. (Rowley (1958) sought to identify the missing centre panel with the Madonna and Child, now reframed as the central pinnacle of the triptych, from Badia a Rofena (now at Asciano)). The execution is probably at least partly by Ambrogio’s workshop.

Siena. Museo Diocesano di Arte Sacra (Oratorio di San Bernardino).
*'Madonna del Latte’. Wood, 90 x 45.
In a poignantly human representation, the Virgin looks tenderly down on the nursing Child, who kicks and squirms in her arms. Her halo is inscribed with the Angel's Salutation from St Luke's Gospel ('Hail Mary, full of grace ...'). Probably comparatively late (early 1440s?). From the Augustinian monastery at Lecceto (11 km south-west of Siena). When the monastery was abandoned in 1866, it was transferred to the church of San Francesco and thence to the Archbishop’s palace.
Christ Blessing. Wood, 55 x 20.
This small arched panel, restored in 1985, was the centre pinnacle of a polyptych. The five main panels of the polyptych are still in the church of San Pietro in Castelvecchio. The Christ Blessing was reunited with the other panels for the Ambrogio Lorenzetti exhibition held at Santa Maria della Scala from October 2017 to January 2018. 
Bust of a King (Solomon or Louis IX of France?). Detached fresco, 133 x 93.
A vertical fragment from the decorative border of a large wall fresco. The bust of a king, holding a book and fleur-de-lis sceptre, is depicted in a hexagon of fictive Cosmatesque marble inlay. He was formerly identified as the Franciscan tertiary Louis IX of France, but is now called King Solomon. The fragment came from the convent of San Francesco at Siena, where Ambrogio and Pietro Lorenzetti painted frescoes in the Chapter House. The museum preserves another, more substantial fragment, attributed to Pietro and representing the Resurrected Christ. Other fragments were sold from San Francesco in the late nineteenth century and are now in the National Gallery London, and the City Art Gallery, Birmingham. Two large Franciscan scenes by Ambrogio and a Crucifixion by Pietro were detached largely intact from the walls of the Chapter House and are now displayed in the church of San Francesco.       

Siena. Archivio di Stato.
Gabella book cover: the Commune. 41 x 24.
The little panel is the front cover of a book, which, as stated in the long inscription, records receipts and payments of the Sienese tax office (Gabella Generale) for July to December 1344. The allegorial figure, representing the Commune, closely resembles that in the fresco of Good Government in the Palazzo Pubblico. He sits enthroned, wearing the fur-lined hat of a podestà and dressed in the black and white colours of Siena. He holds a sceptre and the civic seal (depicting the Virgin Mary as Queen of Siena), and his feet rest on the she-wolf suckling her twin cubs Senus and Aschius (sons of Remus and the legendary founders of Siena). The three heraldic shields show the coats-of-arms of the officials responsible for presenting the accounts. The attribution is not universally accepted, and the panel has sometimes been assigned to an assistant of Ambrogio Lorenzetti or to Lippo Vanni.

Siena. Sant’Agostino. Piccolomini Chapel.
*Maestà. Frescoed lunette, 128 x 240.
The Madonna is seated on a throne of seraphim among eight saints: Agatha (offering her severed breasts); Augustine (holding books); Catherine (offering her head on a trencher); Bartholomew (holding the knife with which he was flayed); Michael the Archangel (with sword); Clare (holding a vase from which rises a seraph); Anthony Abbot (a venerable monk holding flowers); and Apollonia (holding a huge pair of pincers). The Christ Child is frightened by a goldfinch, symbol of his future Passion. The fresco, situated in the former Chapter House of the Augustinian convent, was discovered in 1944 behind Sodoma’s Epiphany. There are no specific early references to it, although Ghiberti and Vasari say that Ambrogio painted frescoes of the Crucifixion, the Legend of St Catherine and the Apostles’ Creed in the church. Some heads of saints to the right of the great door have been thought to be remains of the St Catherine cycle. The frescoes were probably painted shortly before 1338, when the General Chapter of the Order of Augustinian Hermits met in the convent. The Maestà was restored for the Ambrogio Lorenzetti exhibition held in Siena in 2017-18, and the colours now appear remarkably fresh and bright. 
The church is usually closed, but may be open for two or three hours in the afternoon. The Piccolomini Chapel is accessed by a door half-way along the right aisle.

Siena. San Francesco. North transept, third chapel.
*St Louis of Toulouse before Pope Boniface VIII. Detached fresco, 410 wide.
Louis, a young Angevin prince, renounced a claim to the throne of Naples in order to take Franciscan vows. He is shown at his investiture in December 1296 as a friar kneeling before Pope Boniface VIII. His father, Charles II of Anjou, seated among a row of Cardinals, looks on disapprovingly.   
*Martyrdom of Franciscans. Detached fresco, 338 wide.
An Oriental ruler is enthroned in judgement in a Gothic portico. The seven curious little statues on pinnacles may represent Virtues and Vices. On the left, three friars await execution. Three others have already been beheaded, and children throw stones at their corpses. The fresco was once mistakenly believed to be one described by Ghiberti that represented the martyrdom of Bishop Thomas of Tolentino and three Franciscan companions in 1321 at Tana (Thane), near modern Mumbai. The subject is now often identified as the execution, by the Soldan, of St Daniel and six other Franciscan missionaries in 1227 at Ceuta in North Africa. But the costumes and Mongolian facial features suggest that the martyrdom represented might rather be that of Bishop Richard of Burgundy and three other Franciscans in 1339-40 at Almalyk (Olmaliq) in central Asia (modern Uzbekistan). There is a general similarity of composition to Giotto's fresco of St Francis before the Sultan in the Bardi Chapel at Santa Croce. 
The two frescoes were part of a cycle of large narrative Franciscan scenes. They were discovered in the Chapter House, beneath whitewash, in about 1855 and transferred to the church in 1857. They were thoroughly restored in 2017. Another fragment from the cycle, representing the heads of four Poor Clares, is preserved in the National Gallery, London.
Also from the Chapter House are two frescoes attributed to Pietro Lorenzetti – a Crucifixion (1^st chapel left of the choir) and a Resurrected Christ (now in the Museo Diocesano). Ghiberti and Vasari do not mention the frescoes in the Chapter House but do describe frescoes by Ambrogio in the cloister of the convent (now restored to house the Faculty of Political Science of the University). These were covered by whitewash in the eighteenth century and assumed totally lost. However, a fragment was discovered during building work in the 1970s of another Franciscan scene (believed to represent the martyrdom at Tana). According to the History of Siena by Sigismondo Tizio (d. 1528), the frescoes were painted in 1331, but this date has often been doubted. An earlier dating of around 1326 has been proposed on the grounds that renovation work began on the church that year. On the other hand, identification of the martyrdom as the one at Almalyk implies a later dating (after 1340).

Siena. San Pietro in Castelvecchio (sometimes called San Pietro alle Scale).
Polyptych. Wood.
The five panels of the polyptych are currently displayed on the left wall of the small church. The centre panel appears, unusually, to have represented the Virgin standing. It has been cut down, removing the Virgin's legs and also, apparently, a kneeling donor. St Paul, a female saint (Helen?), Michael the Archangel and St Peter are depicted on the side panels. The centre pinnacle of the polyptych, representing Christ Blessing, is now in the Museo Diocesano at Siena. The four side pinnacles (perhaps representing Angels) are lost. The polyptych has been recorded in the church since the early sixteenth century. By 1785, it had been removed from the high altar and broken up, and the individual panels had been transferred to the curate's house. Damaged and inaccessible, the polyptych remained little known until well into the twentieth century. There was an old attribution to 'Lorenzo Lorenzetti' – an imaginary painter supposed to be the father of Pietro and Ambrogio. For modern criticism, the issue has been whether the polyptych is a work of Ambrogio himself or a close follower. The latest criticism inclines to accept the Ambrogio attribution. The paintings appear very dirty and dull in old photographs, taken before a restoration in 1965. They were treated again in preparation for the major Ambrogio Lorenzetti exhibition held at Santa Maria della Scala in 2017-18.