Professor Beth Williamson. 13th March 2024.

Professor Williamson acted as a consultant for the international exhibition on the development of religious images in Siena which opens in New York  in October 2024 and at the National Gallery in 2025.  Her books The Madonna of Humility (2009) and The Reliquary Tabernacle (2020) traced the development of medieval religious art.

She began the lecture with an early 14^th century Avignon wall fresco and a Petrarch manuscript now kept in Liverpool’s Walker Art Gallery. Professor Williamson beautifully illustrated lecture showed the development of reliquary tabernacle art in Siena during the fourteenth century. 

The tabernacles that many of us see as only safes in which to store the Eucharist were developed by the late Middle Ages into reliquaries for sacred fragments. These were designed to display the relics in multi-media objects rather than the tiny tombs that had once housed relics. These elaborate objects were decorated in beautiful colours often painted and gilded and included wood, marble, and ceramics. The reliquaries were sometimes double sided showing relics on both sides. One such reliquary had been stolen in 1989 and only recovered in 2021.  These exquisite objects were paraded through the streets at the times of religious holidays. 

Professor Williamson’s lecture was about more than expensive church objects.  It covered the rivalry between the different workshops of artists like Lippo Memmi and how these artists looked at their rival’s work. She also showed how the portrayal of the Madonna changed from an enthroned Madonna to a Madonna of humility seated on the ground. The reliquaries became triptychs. 

The lecture opened up a beautiful world of colour and invention and took our attention away from the more well-known treasures of Renaissance Florence to the earlier achievements of fourteenth century Siena.