Sienese art and global encounters, 1300-1492

This dissertation examines the representation of otherness in Sienese art, tracing the city's evolving perceptions of human difference across the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. During this period, marked by unprecedented cross-cultural exchanges and expanding geographical awareness, Latin Christendom came into direct contact with populations previously unknown or only imagined through classical and biblical texts. Within this framework, I take Siena as the focal point through which to investigate Western relations with the Mongol Empire during the fourteenth century and with Sub-Saharan Africans in the fifteenth. Siena presents a paradox: despite its landlocked location, lack of direct waterways, and long-standing historiographical reputation for artistic insularity and introspectiveness, the city produced a remarkably rich visual record of 'racial' diversity, unique for its variety, volume and detail. For example, Ambrogio Lorenzetti's Martyrdom of the Franciscans is considered amongst the most meticulous Western depictions of Mongol appearance, while Nicola Pisano's pulpit for Siena cathedral includes the earliest known representation of Black Africans in the iconography of the Adoration of the Magi. Offering an alternative to global art historical narratives that have treated these Sienese examples as isolated anomalies or focused on well-documented international city-states like Venice and Florence, this dissertation proposes a new interpretative approach to Sienese art as a cohesive whole. By examining the city's artistic production across a range of media from 1300 to 1492, it unravels how notions of difference were constructed in Siena prior to the Atlantic slave trade, the rise of European nationalism and early modern essentialists categorisation of 'race.' It argues that Siena's artistic selfhood developed through a fluid exchange with people and objects originating from beyond the Western sphere, ultimately challenging traditional art historical views of a ‘home-grown’ Sienese Renaissance arising as an exclusively Western phenomenon.