Visiting the Siena Pinacoteca, one of the largest gold background collections in the world

Visiting Siena is an important experience in getting to know a symbolic centre of the medieval civilisation of Tuscany and Italy. However, the visit of the town would be very limited if it were limited to the points of major tourist attraction, such as the Duomo and Piazza del Campo. One way to enjoy the quintessence of the city is a tour in the National Pinacoteca. The gallery, which is located a few meters away from the Cathedral complex, boasts one of the largest collections in the world of paintings with gold background, with tables ranging from the first half of the thirteenth century to works dating back to the Baroque era.

You will discover in the Siena Pinacoteca guided tour is Giovanni Antonio Bazzi, known as the “Sodoma“, of whom we will see together the Deposition from the cross, a large altarpiece from the church of San Francesco, where you can see how the artist – who stands as one of the apexes of Sienese painting together with Beccafumi – revolutionized the local tradition with the Raphaelesque novelties of the Roman shipyards.

We will end our Siena Pinacoteca guided tour with the painting of the seventeenth century, once totally artistically unknown in the case of Siena, but which is absolutely worthwhile, if only for an artist like Bernardino Mei of whom you will discover that he had a lot to do with in Rome with a painting genius such as Caravaggio. At the end of this experience you will understand what you would have missed if you had left Siena without having visited this casket of wonders.