A famous song by the band “police” is called “message in a bottle”If you throw a message into the sea or write it in a diary, we know that there is a chance that someday, somewhere someone will read it. 

If, on the other hand, if you feel compelled to write something down, but you hide it where it won’t be found, who is that message for? After visiting the exhibition “Siena the rise of painting” at the MET in New York and in proximity of the opening of the same at the National Gallery in London, I reflected on the work of the 14th century Sienese which most moved me.  

You might never have heard of Lando di Pietro, in comparison with the many great Sienese artists such as Duccio di Boninsegna, Simone Martini and the Lorenzetti brothers whose works are depicted in all the art history texts. But although he defined himself as a simple Goldsmith, we know instead that Lando di PIetro was the creator of a wooden sculpture featured in the exhibit as well as architect and engineer of the unfinished work of the “new Cathedral” of Siena. It was this man whose message deeply impressed me, a message he left that goes beyond the sacred or profane message of the work itself. 

In 1338, the year in which the great Ambrogio Lorenzetti was working on his most innovative work “Allegory and Effects of Good and Bad Government” at the Palazzo del Popolo in Siena, in fact a masterpiece of territorial marketing, secular propaganda and a Socratic message with the common good at its center, the humble and pious Lando di Pietro, outside the city walls of Siena, was carving a wooden crucifix for the friars of the Basilica dell’Osservanza.

Many centuries later, on January 23, 1944, the Allies, in an attempt to bomb the Siena train station to prevent the German occupiers from retreating behind the Gothic Line, missed their target and accidentally hit the Basilica dell’ Osservanza. We know there are no good wars: in 1944 there were intelligent people with stupid bombs, today we have stupid people with Smart bombs, but both result in destruction and deaths are inevitable and the poor crucifix was no exception!

The body of Jesus was torn apart – and the few still smoking remains were recovered by the friars, a knee and the skull. The friars were unaware that Lando di Pietro had not sculpted the skull of Jesus from a single piece of wood but rather in 2 parts masterfully glued together – why? so as to hide in the middle a scroll that was a prayer addressed to the saints and to the son of God!

In it, he asks for mercy for himself and his family, and protection from the enemies of God for all humankind! This may be an early sign of the thinking we associate with the Renaissance- rather than looking inward, he is thinking of all humanity. Then in a postscript Lando expresses the hope that those kneeling before the crucifix will worship Jesus, not this piece of wood in His likeness. This private message, the horizons of this artist, his spirituality and his modesty have left a lasting impression on me, more so perhaps even than the great masters I listed above. are values ​​that lead me to think that he might be uncomfortable in today’s society. 

Many think of the years around 1300 as “backwards”. Consider this, however: 

The philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche famously declared “God is dead” — he did this to point out the decline of one civilization and the beginning of another in which God cannot be at the center of the existence of the human race. It would instead have been unthinkable to remove God from the society of 1300. 

Lando di Pietro gives us an intimate fragment of a medieval man who is in antithesis with the negative sense that many give to that historical period!