BARNA DA SIENA

(b. ~1310 ?, d. ~1360 ?)

Barna (or Berna) da Siena, Italian painter. According to I commentari, written by Lorenzo Ghiberti towards the end of his life, a Sienese painter named Barna painted several works in Tuscany, including many stories from the Old Testament in San Gimignano. Giorgio Vasari, in the first edition of his Vite (1550), listed a number of works by the Sienese painter ‘Berna’, including frescoed Old Testament scenes in the ‘Pieve’ of San Gimignano, but in the second edition (1568) he referred only to New Testament scenes in that church, dating them to the very end of Barna’s life, apparently to 1381. According to Vasari’s brief but vivid life of ‘Berna, painter of Siena’, the artist was killed in a fall from the scaffolding while painting them.

On the basis of Vasari’s second text a fresco cycle of the Infancy and Passion of Christ in the Collegiata of San Gimignano has been traditionally attributed to Barna da Siena, and it has been used as a departure point for attributing panel paintings to the artist. However, according to recent studies, Barna probably never existed, and the San Gimignano frescoes are probably from the 1330s. The pictures formerly attributed to Barna are now scattered among several unidentified masters. It is assumed that some of the San Gimignano frescoes were executed by Simone Martini’s associates under the leadership of Lippo Memmi.

Scenes from the New Testament

Following Vasari, the frescoes in the north aisle of the collegiate church in San Gimignano were long attributed to a painter by the name of Barna da Siena. Vasari based this attribution on Ghiberti, who in the Commentarii (written about 1447) adopted a tradition that was obviously incorrect. Now there is a broad agreement among scholars that Vasari’s information on the figure and life of Barna was freely invented. It is generally assumed today that the painter of the frescoes was from the immediate circle of Simone Martini, most probably Lippo Memmi.

You can find a description of the frescoes in the north aisle in the section of Lippo Memmi.

Send Postcard Learn More

The Mystical Marriage of Saint Catherine

This is the most beautiful and mysterious of the paintings attributed to Barna da Siena. The design of the painting operates four shifts of scale: from the grand, still figures of Catherine and Christ, to the charming miniaturized scene of the Christ Child standing on the bench between mother and grandmother, to the angels battling with black devils below them, and, tiniest of all, to the embracing warriors who have cast away their swords - probably the joint patrons, whose angelic reconciliation this haunting work commemorates.

Send Postcard Learn More