Siena in the context of "Donatello"

Tempera (Italian: [ˈtɛmpera]) is a permanent, fast-drying painting medium consisting of pigments mixed with a water-soluble binder medium, usually glutinous material such as egg yolk. There are several types of tempera paint, but the one containing egg yolk is called egg tempera. Tempera paint made from the milk protein is Casein paint. If the binder is synthetic PVA, the result is polyvinyl acetate tempera. A distemper paint consisting of pigment and binders such as cornstarch, gum arabic and other gums is called poster paint in certain parts of the world, and it is also often confusingly referred to as "tempera paint", although the binders in this paint are different from traditional egg tempera paints and the visual effect is more like gouache.

The term Tempera also refers to the paintings done in any kind of these tempera mediums.

Caterina di Jacopo di Benincasa (25 March 1347 – 29 April 1380), known as Catherine of Siena, was an Italian mystic and pious laywoman who engaged in papal and Italian politics through extensive letter-writing and advocacy. Canonized in 1461, she is revered as a saint and as a Doctor of the Church due to her extensive theological authorship. She is also considered to have influenced Italian literature.

Born and raised in Siena, Catherine wanted from an early age to devote herself to God, against the will of her parents. She joined the "mantellates", a group of pious women, primarily widows, informally devoted to Dominican spirituality; later these types of urban pious groups would be formalized as the Third Order of the Dominicans, but not until after Catherine's death. Her influence with Pope Gregory XI played a role in his 1376 decision to leave Avignon for Rome. The Pope then sent Catherine to negotiate peace with the Florentine Republic. After Gregory XI's death (March 1378) and the conclusion of peace (July 1378), she returned to Siena. She dictated to secretaries her set of spiritual treatises, The Dialogue of Divine Providence. The Great Schism of the West led Catherine of Siena to go to Rome with the pope. She sent numerous letters to princes and cardinals to promote obedience to Pope Urban VI and to defend what she calls the "vessel of the Church". She died on 29 April 1380, exhausted by her rigorous fasting. Urban VI celebrated her funeral and burial in the Basilica of Santa Maria sopra Minerva in Rome.

Pope Alexander III (c. 1100/1105 – 30 August 1181), born Roland (Italian: Rolando), was head of the Catholic Church and ruler of the Papal States from 7 September 1159 until his death in 1181.

A native of Siena, Alexander became pope after a contested election, but had to spend much of his pontificate outside Rome while several rivals, supported by Holy Roman Emperor Frederick I Barbarossa, claimed the papacy. Alexander rejected Byzantine Emperor Manuel I Komnenos' offer to end the East–West Schism, sanctioned the Northern Crusades, and held the Third Council of the Lateran. He canonized Thomas Becket and Bernard of Clairvaux. The city of Alessandria in Piedmont is named after him.

The Maestà, or Maestà of Duccio, is an altarpiece composed of many separate paintings commissioned from Duccio di Buoninsegna by the city of Siena in Tuscany in 1308 and is his major work. Duccio's Maestà was the first altarpiece to have both a front and back side. The front panels make up a large enthroned Madonna and Child with saints and angels, and a predella of the Childhood of Christ with prophets.

The reverse showed, in forty-three small panels, scenes from the Life of the Virgin and the Life of Christ, and were topped by and additional six panels showing angels. Several panels are now dispersed or lost. The base of the panel has an inscription that reads (in translation): "Holy Mother of God, be thou the cause of peace for Siena and life to Duccio because he painted thee thus." Though it took a generation for its effect to be truly felt, Duccio's Maestà set Italian painting on a course leading away from the hieratic representations of the Italo-Byzantine style and towards more direct presentations of reality, as developed by leading figures such as Giotto—believed to have been Duccio's pupil—during the Trecento.

Duccio di Buoninsegna (UK: /ˈduːtʃioʊ/ DOO-chee-oh, Italian: [ˈduttʃo di ˌbwɔninˈseɲɲa]; c. 1255/1260 – c. 1318/1319), commonly known as just Duccio, was an Italian painter active in Siena, Tuscany, in the late 13th and early 14th century. He was hired throughout his life to complete many important works in government and religious buildings around Italy. Duccio is considered one of the greatest Italian painters of the Middle Ages, and is credited with creating the painting styles of Trecento Gothic style and the Sienese school.

The Crevole Madonna is a tempera and gold on wood panel painting by the Tuscan painter Duccio di Buoninsegna, created c. 1283–1284. Originally located in the Pieve di Santa Cecilia in Crevole, it is now held in the Museo dell'Opera metropolitana del Duomo in Siena. It was one of the artist's first works.

Italian Renaissance sculpture was an important part of the art of the Italian Renaissance, in the early stages arguably representing the leading edge. The example of Ancient Roman sculpture hung very heavily over it, both in terms of style and the uses to which sculpture was put. In complete contrast to painting, there were many surviving Roman sculptures around Italy, above all in Rome, and new ones were being excavated all the time, and keenly collected. Apart from a handful of major figures, especially Michelangelo and Donatello, it is today less well-known than Italian Renaissance painting, but this was not the case at the time.

Italian Renaissance sculpture was dominated by the north, above all by Florence. This was especially the case in the quattrocento (15th century), after which Rome came to equal or exceed it as a centre, though producing few sculptors itself. Major Florentine sculptors in stone included (in rough chronological order, with dates of death) Orcagna (1368), Nanni di Banco (1421), Filippo Brunelleschi (1446), Nanni di Bartolo (1451), Lorenzo Ghiberti (1455), Donatello (1466), Bernardo (1464) and his brother Antonio Rossellino (1479), Andrea del Verrocchio (1488), Antonio del Pollaiuolo (1498), Michelangelo (1564), and Jacopo Sansovino (1570). Elsewhere there was the Siennese Jacopo della Quercia (1438), from Lombardy Pietro Lombardo (1515) and his sons, Giovanni Antonio Amadeo (1522), Andrea Sansovino (1529), Vincenzo Danti (1576), Leone Leoni (1590), and Giambologna (1608, born in Flanders).

Luca Signorelli (c. 1441/1445 – 16 October 1523) was an Italian Renaissance painter from Cortona, in Tuscany, who was noted in particular for his ability as a draftsman and his use of foreshortening. His massive frescos of the Last Judgment (1499–1503) in Orvieto Cathedral are considered his masterpiece.

In his early 40s he returned to live in Cortona, after working in Florence, Siena and Rome (1478–84, painting a now lost section of the Sistine Chapel). With an established reputation, he remained based in Cortona for the rest of his life, but often travelled to the cities of the region to fulfill commissions. He was probably trained by Piero della Francesca in Florence, as his cousin Giorgio Vasari wrote.