Book tickets and find out more on the National Gallery website. 

On 20th June 2025, the National Gallery will be hosting an international conference to mark the end of its current exhibition, Siena: The Rise of Painting 1300-1350, organised in collaboration with the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Across four sessions, papers will explore the remarkable achievements and innovations of the city’s leading painters of the 14th century – Duccio di Buoninsegna, Pietro and Ambrogio Lorenzetti, and Simone Martini. Speakers from the USA, Europe and the UK will discuss new insights into the function of paintings made in Siena, their intellectual and devotional contexts, the reconstruction of dispersed altarpieces, and consider the connections between Siena and the wider world.

The conference also provides the opportunity for new technical research on Duccio’s monumental ‘Maestà’ to be presented for the first time, alongside other recent findings from scientific investigations of trecento Sienese objects.

Speakers

• Professor Anne Derbes (Professor Emerita, Hood College)
• Dominic Ferrante (Robert Simon Fine Art)
• Dr Vera-Simone Schulz (Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz & Leuphana University Lüneburg)
• Dr Machtelt Brüggen Israëls (University of Amsterdam)
• Professor Diana Norman (Professor Emerita, Open University)
• Dr Carl Strehlke (Emeritus Curator, Philadelphia Museum of Art)
• Dr Helen Howard (The National Gallery)
• Dr Jo Dillon (The Fitzwilliam Museum of Art)
• Dr Lucy Wrapson (Hamilton Kerr Institute)
• Speakers from the Opificio delle Pietre Dure, Florence
• Professor Jeffrey Hamburger (Harvard University)
• Professor Sonia Chiodo (Università di Firenze)
• Dr Elisa Camporeale (Independent Scholar)