The Story of Siena and San Gimignano

Then, suddenly, all the bells of the churches and towers began to ring. The imperialists – Spaniards, Italians, Germans – marched in by the same gate. They entered quietly and in an orderly fashion, but made a great shouting and uproar when they reached the Campo. Surrounded by a splendidly equipped guard of German halberdiers, the Marchese di Marignano rode to the Duomo and had the Mass of the Holy Spirit solemnly sung. But the choristers broke down in sobs and tears, and the lamentations of the people drowned the music. Vast supplies of provisions, brought from Florence, appeared in the Campo; white bread and wine, grain, fresh and salt meat, and eggs. The starving Sienese, rushing to buy, instantly swept the piazza clear of these provisions, like the advent of a sudden whirlwind.

For some while the ultimate fate of the once mighty Republic hung in doubt. Cosimo had conquered as the lieutenant of the Emperor, and the latter first invested his own son, Philip II. of Spain, with Siena and its dominion as a vacant fief of the Empire. Philip ruled it for two years by means of the tyrannical Cardinal of Burgos, who, in defiance of the articles of the capitulation, began to build a fortress and filled the prisons with suspected persons. There was even some talk of ceding the Sienese State to Pope Paul IV., that he might invest his nephews, the Caraffa, with it. But at length Cosimo de’ Medici had his will, and in July 1557, he obtained from Philip the investiture of Siena, its city and dominion, to be held as a fief from the King of Spain. But the Spanish monarch reserved to himself the seaboard of the late Republic – including Talamone, Orbetello, Port’ Ercole and Porto Santo Stefano – which henceforth, until the eighteenth century, formed what were known as the Spanish Praesidia.130

But Montalcino still held out under French protection. Mario Bandini had carried off the public seals; and, although he sent these back after he had copied them, the Sienese in Montalcino, declaring that ubi cives, ibi patria, still represented the old Republic of Siena, coined money, and for some time kept a large portion of the Sienese State in obedience to them and France. Mario Bandini died there in 1558; that other hero of the last days of the Republic, Enea Piccolomini, had died a month before the capitulation of Siena itself. At length, the treaty of Câteau Cambresis, which decided the fate of Italy, decided the destinies of Montalcino as well. The heroic little Republic sent two ambassadors to Cambresis, Bernardino Buoninsegni and Annibale Buonsignori, pleading either for liberty or for the rule of France. That failing, they capitulated in August 1559, to Spain and Cosimo upon honourable terms, and the Republic of Siena was a thing of the past.

In 1561 Cosimo, Duke of Florence and Siena (he did not become Grand Duke until 1570), made his triumphant entry into Siena. Henceforth he ruled the city by means of a lieutenant-general and a Balìa appointed by himself; the other forms of republican government were preserved, as the Duke was anxious to attract back to Siena those whom Spanish brutality had driven away, but with hardly the shadow of any political authority. The great grand-ducal citadel of Santa Barbara, now that most pleasant of lounging-places at sunset, tells its own story.

Deprived of liberty and independence, without even the showy compensation of the presence of a Court, Siena became a kind of glorified provincial city. The energies of nobles and people alike manifested themselves in the numerous academies for which the Sienese were always famous, in the wild sports of the contrade, in the social and literary gatherings, veglie and trattenimenti, which became proverbial throughout Italy.

For the rest, Siena followed the fortunes of the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, and shared in the great national awakening of Italy that our own days have seen.

CHAPTER IX

Through the City of the Virgin

AT the famous Croce del Travaglio, where the Bohemian Caesar learned to respect the might of a free people and Giovanni Martinozzi routed the hireling soldiery of the last of the Petrucci, the three chief streets of Siena lead off into the three Terzi: the Via Cavour into the Terzo di Camollia, the Via Ricasoli into the Terzo di San Martino, the Via di Città into the Terzo di Città.

“In every good city,” so runs a report of a commission of the Council of the People in 1398, “provision is made for the adornment and improvement of the city. And you have this your piazza of the Campo which is the most beautiful that exists, and you had that ornament of the Strada de’ Banchi which began at the piazza of the Tolomei and came down as far as Porta Salaia, such that, neither in Venice nor in Florence nor in any other town in this country, was there a more beautiful street. Now it is spoilt; for shoemakers and tailors have returned to it, and it is spoilt. Let therefore our Signori choose four citizens, who shall have to embellish it, so that the bankers shall be together in one part of it, the drapers and goldsmiths in another, the furriers and armourers in another, and that within these limits no other trades can be exercised save those that shall be ordained by these four.”131 During the fifteenth century, there was a regular magistracy of three citizens elected annually to have the full authority of the General Council in all matters pertaining to the adorning of the city; they were called the Ufficiali sopra l’ornato, and were even empowered to force people to sell houses and sites, when these, from jealousy or other motives, were preventing wealthy citizens from building goodly palaces, bellissimi casamenti– “the which thing causes shame and damage to the city.”132

The street referred to in the above document now includes the first sections of the Via Cavour and Via di Città, and is the most animated part of Siena. Turning up the Via di Città, we have on our left the Loggia di Mercanzia, the meeting-place of the merchants of the Republic, the centre of the commercial life of the city in the fifteenth century, which afterwards became the Casino de’ Nobili. It was designed by Sano di Matteo in 1416, and mainly executed about 1438 by Pietro del Minella, in a style (like that of the Loggia dei Lanzi at Florence) intermediate between Gothic and Renaissance. Of the saints on the façade, St Peter and St Paul are by Vecchietta, Victor, Ansanus and Savinus by Antonio Federighi; the two marble seats, to right and left, are by Federighi and Il Marrina respectively. On the right, past the meeting-place of the Accademia de’ Rozzi (an institution dating from the early part of the Cinquecento), under a kind of colonnade begin the curious Via dei Beccari, the street of the butchers, with the oxhead of their guild prominently displayed (becoming presently the most picturesque of Siena’s old streets, the Via della Galluzza), and the long Via Fontebranda. Then, on the left, the Costa dei Barbieri leads down into the Campo; here in old times was the Porta Salaia, the name of which is still preserved in the Vicolo di Macta Salaia, a little further on. Guarding the Costa is a fine old tower, called of the “Sette Seghinelle,” with various armorial bearings; opposite it, on the right side of the Via di Città, the Podestà lived, before the building of the present Palazzo Comunale.

Opposite the Costa, the Via dei Pellegrini leads off to the Baptistery. On the right is the Palazzo Bindi Sergardi, with ceiling frescoes by Beccafumi, which were greatly admired in their day, and gained for him the commission to decorate similarly the Sala di Concistoro. On the left, at the foot of the Baptistery, is the famous Palace of the Magnifico, built for Pandolfo Petrucci in the early years of the Cinquecento from the design of Giacomo Cozzarelli, who also cast the splendid metal work on the exterior. The arms of the Petrucci are still to be seen under what was the chief entrance, but the lower part of the palace is very squalid now. Of the frescoes that Luca Signorelli, Girolamo Genga and Bernardino Pinturicchio painted for the Magnifico, there now remains nothing but a few fragments in one room, doubtfully ascribed to the last-named master. Hardly can we now conjure up in imagination the days when Machiavelli, coming here as ambassador of the Signoria of Florence, found Pandolfo after dinner surrounded by the chief men of his faction, whom he had invited to talk over the matter, or when Borghese gathered together all the loveliest women of Siena at a banquet to do honour to the younger Lorenzo de’ Medici.

From the Costa de’ Barbieri, the Via di Città leads up into the very heart of old Siena – the Castello Vecchio. On the left is the Palazzo Saracini, a Gothic palace of the thirteenth century completely restored, which came into the possession of the Saracini – whose Saracen’s head and eagle adorn the façade – at the beginning of the seventeenth century. In the olden days it was the Palazzo Marescotti, and the tower that we see, if not in all respects the same, undoubtedly stands upon the site of the one from which Cerreto Ceccolini announced the varying fortunes of the battle of Montaperti. In the courtyard is a statue of Pope Julius III. (1550-1555), Giovanni Maria del Monte, whose mother belonged to the house of the Saracini. The palace contains a large collection of pictures in a long series of rooms. A few only are of importance. Here are several pictures by Beccafumi, conspicuous among which is a large altarpiece, curiously imitating the style of Fra Bartolommeo’s stately creations in this kind and representing the Sposalizio of St Catherine of Siena, in the presence of St Peter and St Paul and other Saints. It was originally in Santo Spirito. “This work,” says Vasari, “which was executed with much judgment and design, gained for him great honour.” Here is also what is said to be the first sketch of Beccafumi’s Nativity in San Martino. There are two characteristic Madonnas by Neroccio di Bartolommeo Landi. Andrea del Brescianino is represented by a Holy Family, two exceedingly beautiful tondi very much above his usual level, and a small painted shrine. An attractive Florentine portrait of a golden-haired girl in a red dress, with the attributes of St Catherine of Alexandria, shown as a Botticelli, is ascribed by Mr Berenson to Sebastiano Mainardi, the painter of San Gimignano. The earlier works by Giovanni di Paolo, Sassetta and others, are mostly unimportant. There is an excellent modern picture by Amos Cassioli representing the visit of Galeazzo Maria Sforza to Lorenzo de’ Medici in 1471. In one of the rooms of the palace there is a small Madonna, much repainted, by Sano di Pietro.

On the right is the Palazzo Piccolomini “delle Papesse,” adorned with the arms of the Piccolomini and now occupied by the Banca d’Italia, begun in 1460 by the sister of Pope Pius II., Caterina Piccolomini, who in the October of that year petitioned the Signoria for exemption from the Gabella for the various stones and marbles required, on the grounds that “the said Madonna Caterina intends and wishes to make the said house in the most noble fashion and with great cost, to the honour of this magnificent city and of your Magnificences and lofty Lordships.”133 In style it shows a peculiar harmonising of the Sienese Gothic with the domestic architecture of the Florentine Quattrocento. The façade is an effective combination of a rusticated basement with smooth grey stone above. The original designer was probably Bernardino Rossellino, the Florentine master whom Pius was employing at Pienza, the actual architects Antonio Federighi and Urbano da Cortona. The work was interrupted in 1472, owing to Madonna Caterina’s lack of means, and finished in 1595 by the Archbishop Ascanio Piccolomini. In the days of this latter genial prelate the palace was a great centre for social gatherings, “to hearken to gracious discussions, judicious discourses, and also disputations touching every noble matter.”134

Beyond the Palazzo delle Papesse is the Palazzo Marsili, a Gothic edifice in red brick – one of the oldest in Siena, but practically rebuilt by Luca di Bartolo in the middle of the fifteenth century. Between these two, the Via del Castoro leads up through the abandoned façade into the Piazza del Duomo. In the days when it was proposed to build the new Cathedral, the Palazzo delle Papesse naturally did not exist, and in its place there would have been a piazza with the chief approach to the Duomo. At the end of the Via di Città is the grey tower, half stone and half brick, of the Forteguerri de’ Grandi, one of the oldest noble families of Siena, which was originally connected by a bridge with the palace opposite, which was also of the Forteguerri (later one of the numerous palaces of the Piccolomini). It was here that Niccolò Borghesi was murdered in June, 1500. He was returning from Mass at the Duomo with several armed servants – for he had been warned that Pandolfo was meditating violence – and passing down the Via del Capitano, when Pandolfo’s emissaries set upon him, killed his servants on the spot, and left him with just enough life to crawl to the foot of the tower, where he was taken into the house of Giovanni Borghesi, to die with that harmonious blending of the devout Christian and the Stoic philosopher that had characterised him throughout.

The Via di Città ends in the Piazza di Postierla, whence the Via del Capitano, Via Stalloreggi, and Via di San Pietro diverge. There is a “Lupa” of the Quattrocento in the square, with a banner-holder in the fine metal-work of the same epoch. In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries the Postierla was a favourite resort of the Sienese nobility, one of the most fashionable places in the city. During the siege, the four ladies of Scipione Bargagli’s Trattenimenti– Clarice, Celia, Olinda and Clizia – met in Clarice’s house, which was one of those with windows that looked out upon the Postierla. They were “all certainly as young and pleasing, as they were clever and honest”; and, it being the Sunday of the Carnival, they resolved, in spite of the cruel enemies of the Republic, to keep the three days of the Carnival, as Clarice suggested, “with some form of pleasant and gentle conversation, according to what will be most agreeable to us all.” But men were needed to make the plan a success. “Indeed,” said Celia, “our delight, however great, would not have its savour unless the presence, at once grave and sweet, of a man brought its condiment to it.” And at that moment there appeared five young men of the city, coming up the street, of course as wise and admirable as they were rich and noble. “In these ardent youths, neither hardships nor loss of means, nor of parents or friends, nor the danger that hung over themselves, had ever been able to cool, much less quench, that quick amorous fire wherewith they, without any fuel, bore their breasts inflamed.” At this sudden apparition the ladies gave devout thanks to Heaven in their hearts, and the bella ragunanza was complete.

On the right of the Postierla is the handsome palace built by the Chigi in the latter part of the Cinquecento. In the Via del Capitano, on the left, is the palace where the Capitano della Guerra or Senatore resided, during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.135 Under its battlements runs a series of coats of arms of these captains or senators, among which the student of Dante will recognise the Lion of the Ordelaffi and the Column of the Colonna. The palace has been completely restored. The cortile, with a staircase guarded by the Lion of the People, somewhat resembles – on a smaller scale – the Palazzo del Podestà at Florence. The palace (which now belongs to the Count Piccolomini della Triana, as the arms on the shield which the Lion holds indicate) was sold by the Republic in the fifteenth century to Tommaso Pecci, one of the leaders of the Noveschi. In his days it was a centre of gay courtly life, and when distinguished visitors, especially those of the gentle sex, passed through Siena, they were usually entertained by the Republic in this palace. That noblest of ladies of the Renaissance, Eleonora of Aragon (the sister of Duke Alfonso of Calabria), on her way to Ferrara to become the wife of Ercole d’Este, stayed here for four days in June 1473. On Sunday, writes Allegretto, “the Commune of Siena, or rather the Signoria, arranged a most beauteous dance before the house of Tommaso Pecci in the street, and all the fair ladies and girls of Siena were invited. And my wife either lost there or had stolen from her a goodly knife, ornamented in silver, which cost me eighteen lire the pair. And in the street there was arranged a great vat of forty measures, divided in half, and a column in the middle upon which were a lion and a wolf, so that the lion threw white wine on one side of the vat and the wolf threw red wine on the other side, and a fountain in the midst between the lion and the wolf threw water. And in the vat stood always silver cups, in order that every one could drink. At the Loggia of the Officers of the Mercanzia, ninety-eight couples of ladies assembled and went to the dance in order, accompanied by as many youths, and in front of the house they danced until nightfall, when there was made a rich and fine collation of all kinds of confectionery.”136

Opposite the Palazzo del Capitano, at the corner of the street and the Piazza del Duomo, is the Palazzo Reale, which Bernardo Buontalenti built at the end of the sixteenth century for the Medicean Grand Dukes of Tuscany. In part, it occupies the site of the palace of Giacoppo Petrucci in which his cruel and tyrannical son, the Cardinal Raffaello, resided. Raffaello left it to his nephew, Anton Maria Petrucci. It was here that the Emperor was lodged in 1536; from here Granvelle and Sfondrato made their “buonissima riforma” of the State, and afterwards the Cardinal Ippolito d’Este with his guard of Switzers.

In the Via di San Pietro is the great red brick Palazzo Buonsignori, with a richly ornamented façade, one of the finest private palaces in Siena in the Gothic style. It was originally built in the fourteenth century, but has a fine court and stairway of the Quattrocento. Between it and the steps to the church is a small Gothic palace of the thirteenth century (completely restored), known as the Casa della Pia. This was the house of Count Nello de’ Pannocchieschi, whose fair fame (in spite of painters and novelists) recent research has cleared from the imputation of his having been the husband – and therefore the murderer – of La Pia, that hapless lady whom Siena made and Maremma unmade, whom the divine poet met among the dim shades of those who died a violent death.137 San Pietro alle Scale, the parish church of San Pietro in Castelvecchio, is a structure of the thirteenth century, with a modernised façade and interior. There are two small tondi by Sano di Pietro, representing the Archangel Gabriel and Santa Lucia, in the sacristy. The picture over the high altar, the Repose on the Flight into Egypt with a handsome swarthy Madonna, is a decidedly meritorious work by Rutilio Manetti. At the end of the Via di San Pietro the Porta dell’Arco leads out beyond the older circuit of walls which represented the limits of the city proper, until the Nine inclosed the suburb in the still standing walls of the fourteenth century.

The Via Stalloreggi is the continuation of the Via di Città as the Via di San Pietro is of the Via del Capitano. Inclosed by the two, bounded outside by the Via delle Cerchia and the Via Baldassare Peruzzi, is the oldest part of the city. At the corner of the Via di Castelvecchio in the Via Stalloreggi, at a house once belonging to one of the Marescotti, is a fresco by Bazzi, “where a dead Christ, who is in the lap of His Mother, hath a marvellous grace and divinity.”138 The Via di Castelvecchio intersects this oldest part of Siena. It is a tall, narrow winding street, in parts squalid, but with here and there a sudden glimpse of a rose garden, or a fig tree in a little cortile bending its branches over the way. In the less picturesque Via San Quirico is the church of San Quirico, perhaps the oldest in Siena, but now modernised. By the side of it, an irritating piece of wall cuts off what should be a superb view of the Duomo. In the same street are the remains of the little church of Sant’ Ansano in Castelvecchio, which was possibly the first baptistery of Siena and of which there is documentary evidence as far back as the year 881.139 Near it stands an old tower, the Rocchetta, which is probably the only remnant of the first castle and certainly the most venerable piece of masonry left in Siena; according to the legend, it was here that St Ansanus himself was imprisoned by the Roman governor before his martyrdom. In the Via delle Murelle (now Via Tommaso Pendola) is the chapel of the Contrada della Tartuca. This part of Siena is rich in charitable institutions. On either side of the street is a great institute for the Deaf and Dumb, and in the refectory of an old convent of the Poor Clares (now the female side of the Institute) the Sisters of Charity show you a beautiful fresco of the Last Supper with scenes from the Passion above. It appears to be the work of some Sienese master of the latter part of the Quattrocento, who had, perhaps, seen Andrea del Castagno’s rendering of the same theme in Santa Appollonia at Florence. The last house in the Via Stalloreggi, on the left, is the one in which Duccio painted his glorious masterpiece, and it was hither that the procession came, to take it in triumph to its place beneath the cupola of the Duomo. Then we pass out of the old city, under the Arco delle due Porte, into the Piazza del Carmine, now a part of the Via Baldassare Peruzzi.

The present church and convent of Santa Maria del Carmine were built early in the sixteenth century, possibly from Peruzzi’s designs; the cloisters are particularly graceful. The convent itself is of very ancient origin, and in the further cloister is the famous Pozzo della Diana – which, however, may possibly have no connection, save by name, with Dante’s cut at the vain hopes and foolish expenditure of the Sienese.140 The church contains some good pictures: the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin by Bazzi; the Ascension of Christ by Pacchiarotti; the Adoration of the Shepherds, begun by Il Riccio and finished by Arcangiolo Salimbeni. But finer than any of these is Beccafumi’s St Michael casting down the rebellious Angels, over the altar opposite the chapel of the Blessed Sacrament, a work of much beauty and great imaginative power, enthusiastically – but hardly excessively – praised by Vasari. Baldassare Peruzzi, Messer Giorgio tells us, was never tired of praising it; “and one day that I saw it with him, uncovered, as I was passing through Siena, I was struck dumb with admiration.” The sacristy contains a statue of St Sigismund, ascribed to Giacomo Cozzarelli. The Palazzo Celsi opposite is ascribed to Peruzzi and contains three ceiling paintings attributed to him, ruined by repainting.

From the Via Baldassare Peruzzi, the Via della Diana and the Via di San Marco lead to the most picturesquely placed of Sienese gates – the Porta San Marco, outside which is a pleasant and shady piazzale with a view over the sweeping country to the distant hills, the Monastery of Sant’ Eugenio standing out conspicuously on its eminence in the foreground. The picturesque Via delle Sperandie leads to the same gate, past a large abandoned convent – the cloisters of which have been deserted even by the soldiers, a frescoed Crucifixion alone remaining to show that it was once a religious place.

The Via delle Cerchia, skirting the older circuit of walls, brings us to the piazza and church of Sant’ Agostino, an ancient edifice completely modernised in the eighteenth century. Over the second altar on the right is the Crucifixion, a late work by Perugino, with a number of saints and the Madonna at the foot of the Cross; the group of St Augustine kneeling, with St Monica standing behind him, is finely conceived. The chapel of the Blessed Sacrament is the chapel of the Piccolomini; the decorations of the altar were undertaken by the Archbishop Ascanio Piccolomini in 1596, “for the worship of God Almighty and the honour of his own family.” The altarpiece, Bazzi’s Adoration of the Magi, in spite of the blackening of the shadows and the overcrowding of the figures, is an exceedingly fine work, thoroughly Lombard in composition and feeling, the beautiful young King on the right curiously recalling Luini’s types; “there is,” says Vasari, “a head of a shepherd between two trees, which seems verily alive,” and which is said to be the painter’s own portrait. The picture was painted for two of the Arduini family, and the name and arms of the Archbishop Ascanio are obviously a later addition. On the left is a marble statue of Pius II. by Duprè, and on the right the Massacre of the Innocents by Matteo di Giovanni. This latter picture shows sufficient dramatic energy and sense of beauty to make us wish that these were displayed upon a less horrible subject. The groups of unconcerned children and the classical bas-reliefs remind us of Matteo’s admirable work upon the pavement of the Duomo, but the king and soldiers are mere hideous caricatures. In the choir is a picture in three divisions – a work in which Mr Berenson calls attention to the “extraordinary grace of motion and beauty of line” – by Simone Martini, representing the blessed Agostino Novello (a courtier of King Manfred, who became a hermit) and four scenes of his miracles. The later Sienese school is fairly well represented by a Way to Calvary by Ventura Salimbeni, and a curious picture (on the last altar to the left of the choir) by Rutilio Manetti, representing the Temptation of St Antony. Beyond Sant’ Agostino is the Porta Tufi, so often mentioned in the story of Siena, outside which, on the site of the present Cimitero della Misericordia, was the famous convent of the Olivetani where Bernardo Tolomei died.