Bill Armstrong. SIBYLS

Il Pavimento del Duomo di Siena / The Siena Cathedral Floor

May 16 - November 15 2026

The Monumental Complex of Siena Cathedral - The Cathedral’s ‘Crypt’

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In his Treatise on Painting, Leonardo da Vinci states that: “in confused matters, the mind is stirred to new inventions”. Bill Armstrong seems to have taken Leonardo’s insight to heart and, continuing his personal artistic exploration of visual reinterpretations of great works of artistic heritage, presents us with a new photographic reworking of a masterpiece of the Italian Renaissance.

With Sistine Gestures, Armstrong had already applied the same photographic technique—based on the artistic use of blurring—to create a series dedicated to Michelangelo Buonarroti’s Last Judgement, a work that has become a permanent installation at the foot of the staircase leading to the Sistine Chapel within the Vatican Museums.

This new photographic project, building on the previous one, focuses on the Sibyls of the floor of Siena Cathedral, which Armstrong’s lens captures in their essence—as figures suspended between myth and prophecy, enigma and revelation—transporting them across the landscapes of time and culture to bring them to us today.

Armstrong’s work, a true contemporary trompe-l’œil, is a visionary reinterpretation of art history and an effective example of contemporary abstraction that aims to reactivate images from the past not as objects to be contemplated, but as open fields of interpretation.