A Month in Siena

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A Month In Siena by Hisham Matar: Episode 2

A Month In Siena by Hisham Matar

Episode 2

BBC Radio 4 - A Month In Siena by Hisham Matar, Episode 2

The author and his wife visit Siena's town hall to see the famous frescoes.

The Palazzo Pubblico has always represented the centre of civic life for the Sienese. The palace contains several frescoes commissioned by the city's governors in the 14th century.

When Hisham Matar was nineteen years old he came across the Sienese School of painting for the first time. In the year in which Matar's life was shattered by the disappearance of his father. the work of the great artists of Siena seemed to offer him a sense of hope. Over the years that followed, his feelings towards these paintings would deepen and, as he says, 'Siena began to occupy the sort of uneasy reverence the devout might feel towards Mecca or Rome or Jerusalem'.

A Month in Siena is the encounter, 25 years later, between the writer and the city he had worshipped from afar. It's a dazzling evocation of an extraordinary place and its effect on the writer's life. It's also an immersion in painting, a consideration of grief and a profoundly moving contemplation of the relationship between art and the human condition. 

'Bewitching . . . Meditating on art, history and the relationship between them, this is both a portrait of a city and an affirmation of life's quiet dignities in the face of loss.' - The Economist, Books of the Year

In episode 2, HIsham Matar and his wife visit the famous frescoes in the town hall or Palazzo Pubblico of Siena. They particularly want to see the 14th Century frescoes painted by Ambrogio Lorenzetti.

Written by Hisham Matar
Read by Khalid Abdalla
Abridged by Jill Waters and Jonquil Panting
Produced by Jill Waters
A Waters Company production for BBC Radio 4

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Hisham Matar's account of a trip to the city whose painters so influenced his view of art.

Book of the Week. With a keen interest in the paintings of the Sienese Scool, Hisham Matar makes a month-long trip to Siena, the city he has worshipped from afar.

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