AMORY: Look at the figures in this painting of the Assumption of the Virgin by Bernardo Daddi. Their serene faces are composed of very simple planes, and their bodies adopt very clear poses and gestures. It’s as if Daddi based the angels and the Virgin on marble sculpture, rather than on the human form. Except for the brilliant gold background, even the color scheme conveys a sculptural restraint and emphasis on structure. This was typical of Florentine painting in the fourteenth century—something this room illustrates particularly well. The paintings hanging on this side of the room are from Florence. Those behind you were made in Siena around the same time.

KANTER: Because we're able to confront Florentine and the Sienese Schools, it's possible to see that, although these two cities were only thirty-five miles apart, the schools of painting that they developed were so very different from each other as to be, well, the equivalent of national differences elsewhere in Europe. The Florentines, by comparison to the Sienese, were ever so much more somber, severe and monumental as painters, the Sienese preferring a lighter, more decorative, more calligraphic effect in the way they drew and colored, even the way they arranged their scenes.