Barna da Siena
1350–1380 · Sienese painter, possibly a fictional construct, active c. 1330-1350
Barna da Siena (also Barna di Siena) is the name given to a Sienese painter who is presumed to have worked between about 1330 and 1350. The biographical data in the reference record, which gives 1350 to 1380, does not match that period. Most scholars now doubt that Barna was a real person, so his biography should be read with caution. What remains clear is a very recognisable style, and the works attributed to him include the Christ Carrying the Cross in the Frick Collection, New York.
The name first appears in Lorenzo Ghiberti's I Commentarii in the mid-fifteenth century, as the author of several works in Tuscany, including Old Testament scenes in San Gimignano. Giorgio Vasari recorded him in the first edition of his Lives (1550), and in the second edition (1568) linked him to the New Testament frescoes in the Collegiata, dating them to around 1381. Specialists think that date unlikely, since on stylistic grounds the paintings seem to belong to the 1330s and 1340s, and their uneven quality suggests three or four different hands.
About the life of the supposed master there are only tentative theories. Vasari's suggested identity is Bernardo Bertini, who was taken prisoner in 1335 during a skirmish with the Luccans and later trained in Simone Martini's workshop. His pupil Giovanni d'Asciano is thought to have finished the frescoes after the master, reportedly died young after falling from a scaffold. These are indirect and uncertain details.
In style, Barna's figures are dramatic and expressive, and his compositions are more compact than those of his predecessors. His Raising of Lazarus shows far fewer figures than Duccio's version, with the emphasis placed on each person's emotions and gestures. His figures have volume and an emotional charge reminiscent of Florentine painters, which has led some to suggest he was not a native of Siena. His legacy lies in setting aside the Gothic formulae of Simone Martini and his followers, in favour of a human quality rarely found in earlier Sienese painting.