'An unimprovable union of exceptionally acute looking, magical prose and authoritative scholarship ... a wonderfully balanced account of a woefully neglected school' - David Ekserdjian, The Times Literary Supplement
Introduction: 'An Art Born Amidst City Streets': The Image of the City
1. Duccio and the Religion of the Commune The Expanded Icon Pisans and Parisians The Maestà Narrative and Predella 'From Greek, Back into Latin'
2. Simone Martini: 'The Sweet New Style' In the French High Fashion The Montefiore Chapel and Franciscan Narrative Simone in Siena 1328-33 The Guidoriccio and Barna Controversies With Petrarch in Avignon: 'il mio Simon'
3. Pietro Lorenzetti: Towards a Franciscan Art The Passion Cycle at Assisi 'A Sweetly Passionate Abandonment to Feeling' New Majesties Imagery of the Journey: Dante and Blessed Umiltà A New Birth
4. Ambrogio Lorenzetti: The Golden Age Returns In the Service of Ben Comun The Image of a Just Society 'The Space of Vernacular Style' The Winter Wall The Cosmographer
5. After the Black Death (1348-1420) Bartolo and Taddeo: 'Patent Mediocrities'? The Fountain and the Font: Jacopo della Quercia 'Lowliness': Bernardino and the Sienese Saints
6. Second Flowering: Sassetta An Alternative Renaissance Francis, Jester of God An Agglomeration of Glimpses Verticality
7. Giovanni di Paolo: The Chessboard Journey Death and the Dante Illuminations The John the Baptist Cycles The Storyteller
8. The Lost Cause: From the Master of the Osservanza to Francesco di Giorgio Asciano and the Shared Idiom Towards Pienza Francesco di Giorgio and 'Mathematical Humanism' Discarding the 'Humble Style'