Asciano: a Famous Painting

 

On his tour of Siena and Southern Tuscany, Edward Hutton's first stop after leaving Siena was Asciano whose claim to fame was its churches. One of them contained a famous depiction of the Birth of the Blessed Virgin. Although, modern scholars attribute the painting to an unknown Master, Hutton followed Bernard Berenson and gave it to Sassetta.

As you gaze southward from the platform of Siena, from the Porta Romana or the bastion of S. Barbara, you see before you, across the narrow gardens that hem Siena in and fill all her valleys with plenteousness, a country of a very different character, that has much in common with the bare uplands about Volterra, a strong and masculine country of vast and barren undulations, of low and restless clay hills, very tragic in aspect and full of mystery. 

 

Almost invisible at midday in the glaze of the summer sun, often hidden in early morning by the mists of the valleys, this strange wilderness reveals itself only at evening, when it seems to lie like a restless sea between the city and that far away fair mountain, Mont’ Amiata, whose beautiful and pure outline nothing can ever trouble or modify. Forbidding at first, little by little, as day by day, evening by evening, you gaze on that vast loneliness, it begins to attract you, to call you, to fascinate you; its little cities half-hidden here and there in the sombre billows of clay or suddenly shining out in a glint of stormy sunshine, or delicately revealed in some virginal dawn, beckon you from Siena, till at last you set out to find them where they are repeating their beautiful names—Asciano, Buonconvento, Montepulciano, Pienza, S. Quirico, Montalcino, Radicofani, Chiusi…. (175)

 

But the true splendour of Asciano lies in her churches, which are to be found alike in her three divisions. There is S. Agata in the town proper, the Collegiata since 1542, a fine and interesting building of the transition period. It is perhaps here that Asciano keeps her greatest treasure. For in the choir behind the high altar, on the left, is a magnificent altarpiece, an early work by Sassetta, representing the Birth of the Blessed Virgin, with scenes from her life. … It is certainly the earliest important work by Sassetta that has come down to us. It must have been one of the greatest and noblest works anywhere to be seen in Europe when it was new, for it is full of a sweet gravity, precision, and daintiness that still entrance us and lift up our hearts. In the midst, in a beautiful and lofty room before a cheerful fire… sits some sister, maybe of S. Anne, with the Blessed Virgin—our Life, our Sweetness, and our Hope—in her arms. A servant warms some linen before the crackling flames, while to and fro through the sunlit room angels softly pass and repass, intent on the service of their Queen. Nor are they forgetful of S. Anne, who, still abed, is served by one of them, while another waits on guard, fascinated by the little Virgin. To the left without sits S. Joachim, talking, it may be, with the doctor, while a little lad, perhaps S. Joseph, runs in from the garden, charmingly visible, with its well and cypress and border of flowers, through an open doorway. Above are three scenes: in the midst the Madonna and Child with four angels, to the left the death, and to the right the funeral of the Blessed Virgin. Nothing can exceed the intimate loveliness of this work. (175-176)

 

 

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 Edward Hutton: Siena and Southern Tuscany, New York, 1910.