Don't miss this golden moment in art

Stand in front of not one but several major works which have been separated for centuries.  

Simone Martini’s Orsini polyptych, split between Antwerp, Paris and Berlin is together again. His panels for the Siena’s Palazzo Pubblico altarpiece are reunited. 

Panels from Duccio’s Maestà, one of the largest and most complex altarpieces ever produced, on loan from Madrid, Fort Worth, New York and Washington and his ‘Virgin and Child’ and ‘Crucifixion’ triptychs come together 

For the first time in centuries, we can experience them together, see the connections between them and understand how they work together visually. They were a radical new way of visual storytelling.

Who were Duccio and the three younger artists, the brothers, Pietro and Ambrogio Lorenzetti and Simone Martini? Find out how they worked, who they knew and how they promoted themselves. See some of their most famous works under one roof in London. 

Look beyond the city and discover how Sienese painters, sculptors and artisans took on commissions for patrons in Florence, the Angevin kings of Naples and the papal court in Avignon, producing a kind of international style that was admired and emulated in cities and courts across Europe.  

Trade routes brought textiles from Greater Iran via Genoa and Venice, silks from Mongol territories and carpets from Turkey. The geometric patterns and textures of these incredibly rare objects are reproduced in Sienese paintings first time.

Gold, in its many forms, dazzles throughout the exhibition. Sienese painters were astonishingly innovative in the use of gold in their pictures. 

See figures dressed in real and imagined fabrics, beautifully draped silks and fluttering golden cloth. Artists used intricate tooling onto gilded ground to create a texture like woven threads that would have shimmered in candlelight. 

Siena's goldsmiths were also famously skilled. Enjoy glittering examples of their ingenuity.

Enjoy a mix of exquisite rare objects in metalwork, enamel, gilded glass, wood, marble, delicate textiles and manuscript illumination. All are rare and some are on view for the first time outside their home.  Discover how different art forms influenced each other. 

Teenage angst, inconsolable grief, anger and joy are just some of the emotions we can see painted credibly. See some of the earliest examples in the history of Western painting. Artists humanise holy figures through their expressions and intimate gestures. Look in detail at women and men’s faces showing expressions that Duccio and his fellow artists would have seen in the streets of Siena. 

Be among some of the oldest and rarest examples of 14th-century art - precious survivors of changes in taste, physical deterioration and dismemberment. 

Follow stories across panels from the huge ‘Maestà’ altarpiece that was paraded through the streets of Siena when it was delivered to the cathedral, glowing like a giant colourful picture book, accessible to everyone at a time when few could read or write.