Art history, like the military kind, is written by the victors. Thus Florentine Giorgio Vasari's encyclopedic "Lives of the Artists," published in 1550, is a propagandist's account of his home city's starring role in the artistic and intellectual phenomenon we now call the Renaissance.
Banca Monte Dei Pschi di Siena photo
Historians bought Vasari's line, and today, Florence takes the Renaissance credit -- but it was nearly not so. Once, Florence had a serious artistic rival: its Tuscan neighbor the city-state of Siena. An exhibition of Sienese art, at the Tokyo Station Gallery until Dec. 6, goes a good way toward explaining why.