The Story of Siena and San Gimignano

The frescoes by Benozzo Gozzoli in the choir, begun for Fra Domenico Strambi in 1463 and finished in 1465, are among the supreme achievements of Florentine painting in the third quarter of the Quattrocento. They set forth the chief events in the life of St Augustine, partly drawn from the Confessions. The first fresco, in which the little Augustine is taken to school by his parents, Patritius and Monica, is admirable for the freshness and naiveté with which the whole comedy of school-life, past and present, is treated. The drastic methods adopted by the schoolmaster in dealing with the little idler are specially referred to in the Confessions, where Augustine seems to remember his floggings with a curious sense of injury and injustice.192 In the next (partly obliterated), we have his admission to the University of Carthage at the age of nineteen – that season of lawless loves and Manichaean errors so inimitably described at the beginning of the third Book. On the window wall, much damaged and restored, are St Monica praying for him, his crossing the sea and arrival in Italy. Next, we see him teaching philosophy and rhetoric in Rome, the usual composition of the lecturer and his pupils which we find elsewhere in the art of the fifteenth century, with those splendid portrait heads that make the modern student realise the wonderful intellectual vigour of these Florentines of the Renaissance. Then comes the journey from Rome to Milan, whither Augustine is sent by the Roman prefect Symmachus, in answer to the Milanese request for a teacher of rhetoric; even so might young Pico della Mirandola have looked when he first came to Florence. This somewhat, indeed, recalls the style of the Procession of the Magi in the Palazzo Riccardi, but is naturally in a more chastened style. Above, two white-robed, green-winged Angels bear a scroll in honour of Fra Domenico Strambi, who – it is expressly stated – at his own cost had bidden Benozzo paint here; it is dated 1465. Then Augustine arrives at Milan, makes the acquaintance of Ambrose, is received by the Emperor Theodosius. After this he listens to St Ambrose preaching, St Monica kneels before the latter (whom, writes the Saint, she loved as an Angel of God), and Augustine begins to be convinced. On the window wall we have the wonderful scene in the garden, where Augustine and Alypius are finally and simultaneously converted by the reading of the Epistle to the Romans – after Augustine has heard the child’s voice singing again and again from the neighbouring house: Tolle, lege; tolle, lege, “Take and read: take and read.”193 This is followed by his Baptism. Next Augustine, black-robed and aureoled, is among the monks, and meets the little child by the shore who rebukes him for attempting to penetrate into the mystery of the Trinity. After this comes perhaps the finest picture of the whole series, the Death of St Monica, with, at the window high up on the left, the famous conversation at Ostia which preceded it;194 the youth standing behind Augustine with clasped hands is his son Adeodatus, ex me natus carnaliter, de peccato meo. Monica is sitting up in her bed to receive the Christ Child in the Host, and above her soul is being carried up to Paradise in the usual little cloud (the nubiletta bianchissima of Dante’s Vita Nuova) by Angels. On the right of the fresco, Augustine is returning to Africa. In the four remaining frescoes of the lunettes and on either side of the window, Augustine as Bishop of Hippo blesses his people, he confutes the heretic Fortunatus, has a vision of the glory of St Jerome in Paradise, and at last follows him. This last fresco, representing the death and apotheosis of Augustine, is also an admirable work. Full of expression and excellently composed, it is one of those traditional death scenes which, in their ultimate analysis, proceed from Giotto’s Death of St Francis. The Evangelists on the ceiling, the eight Saints on the pilasters are also by Benozzo. In these frescoes he was assisted by pupils and apprentices, chief among whom was a certain Giusto di Andrea, who had previously worked with Fra Lippo Lippi.

Also in the Piazza Sant’ Agostino is the small church of San Pietro, which has the peculiar distinction of depending upon the bishopric of Volterra, while all the other churches of the town are subject to the Bishop of Colle. It contains several fragments of frescoes of the fourteenth century, still partly under whitewash. Over the altar on the right is a frescoed Madonna and Child with the Baptist and St Paul, of the school of Lippo Memmi, in which – a rather unusual motive – the Child is running to the Mother, clasping her hand in one and holding a fruit in the other hand.

In the Via Venti Settembre, on the left, is Santa Chiara. The altarpiece is a good work of the chief Florentine painter of the seventeenth century, Matteo Rosselli. It represents Christ enthroned upon the clouds, between the Madonna and the Baptist; below are St Francis and St Louis of France on our left, while on our right – a motive equally happy in conception and execution – St Clare is bringing Santa Fina into the celestial company. There are several pictures ascribed to Rosselli in the town, but this is the only one in the least degree worthy of the painter of the David of the Pitti. Further on, on the right, are the Hospitals, including the Spedale di Santa Fina, founded shortly after her death by the Commune, partly from the alms of pilgrims. In 1274 two special officers, Esortatori, were appointed to visit sick persons, to beg alms or legacies for the institution. In the entrance hall, formerly the chapel, are frescoes by Mainardi; four Saints in lunettes and, over the door, a Madonna and Child blessing those that enter. In the chapel is preserved the tavola, the board upon which Fina made her hard bed of expiation for the sins of the world, and which blossomed out into flowers when her sacrifice was accomplished.195 Beyond is San Girolamo, a church belonging to a convent of Vallombrosan nuns, with an altarpiece by Vincenzo Tamagni of 1522, with an upper part added by a later hand. At the end, connected with the former convent by a covered way across, is the church of San Jacopo, which belonged to the Knights Templars before the nuns had it; it is a building of the eleventh century (said to have been built in 1096 by the Sangimignanesi who returned from the Crusades), lovely in its ruin, in a little inclosed plantation of olive trees. The ornamented terra-cotta window and the curious coloured plates on the façade are noteworthy. Within are old frescoes, apparently of the Sienese school of the fourteenth century. Mr Berenson ascribes the St James on the pilaster to Pier Francesco. Then we pass out, through a breach in the walls, to the olive trees that clothe them, and to the sweeping view of the valley beyond.

At Santa Chiara, the Via della Fonte leads down between vineyards and old walls to the Porta della Fonte, over which is a chapel. Outside, over the gate, a statue of St Geminianus records the attempt of the Ardinghelli and their allies to capture the town for the Duke of Athens at this point, in 1342. The wonderfully picturesque fountains below, where the women linger over their washing and carry up pitchers to the houses, were constructed in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. A little to the left, among the olives, flaming poppies and purple foxgloves, where a few oaks still remind us of the woods of old, there is a superb view of the “Castello della Selva” right above us, with eight of its towers visible.

The large prison that rises up at the walls, to the left of us, occupies the site of the Rocca that defended the town until the Florentine occupation in 1353. After that, a Dominican convent was built upon the spot – the convent in which Savonarola stayed while preaching the Lent in the Pieve. It was suppressed in the eighteenth century by the Austrian Grand Duke of Tuscany. Opposite to it, in the Via del Castello, is the little church of San Lorenzo in Ponte, with a few unimportant frescoes of the Trecento.

Passing under the Arco de’ Talei into the Via San Giovanni, we see a large piece of the first circuit of walls on the right, adjoining the Portone, blackened apparently by fire, and the tall Torre Talei. Opposite the tower is a shrine, with a ruined fresco by Mainardi. In the refectory of a former convent of Benedictine nuns (now the Palazzo Pratellesi) is a very Peruginesque fresco by Vincenzo Tamagni, representing the mystical marriage of St Catherine of Alexandria; it is dated 1528. On the left is the dismantled façade of San Giovanni, a building of the eleventh century. Over the inside of the gate is a chapel built in 1601 to cover a venerated picture, but the outside of the Porta San Giovanni is still unspoiled thirteenth century architecture.

A short way beyond the Porta San Giovanni is the former monastery of Monte Oliveto, founded in 1340 by Giovanni di Gualtiero Salvucci. In the lunette over the door of the church is a fresco of the Madonna between two white-robed monks, possibly by Tamagni. There is a Madonna of 1502 in the church by Mainardi, and two Sienese pictures of the school of Lippo Memmi are in the sacristy. In the cloister is a frescoed Crucifixion by Benozzo Gozzoli, with St Jerome beating his breast and saying the Rosary at the foot of the Cross. Beyond Monte Oliveto, a road of olives and barley fields leads to the small hamlet of Santa Lucia. In its church are a fresco of the Crucifixion, with a little Dominican kneeling at the foot, by Pier Francesco, and a picture by Fra Paolino – one of those compositions of Madonnas and Saints that he inherited from Fra Bartolommeo.

Outside the Porta San Matteo is the convent of the Cappuccini. In its church is a Deposition from the Cross of 1591, ascribed to Jacopo Ligozzi of Verona. About two miles further on, with a splendid view over the valley, is Cellole, a Romanesque church of the first years of the thirteenth century. Attached to it was the Leper Hospital, where San Bartolo devoted his life to the stricken and where at last, himself overtaken by the fell disease, he became one with the rest and died.

Behind the Collegiata, the way leads up to the Rocca di Montestaffoli, the fortress which the Florentines built after 1353, to maintain their hold upon the town. “The Commune of Florence,” writes Matteo Villani, “because it wished to live more secure of the town of San Gimignano and to remove every cause of evil thinking from its townsfolk, began to have made and finished, without leaving off the work at their expense, a great and noble Rocca and fort, the which was raised above the Pieve, where was the church of the Friars Preachers. And that church it had rebuilt, larger and more beautiful, on the other side of the town lower down.”196 It was dismantled, two hundred years later, by Cosimo de’ Medici. The greater part of it is now a garden, with the old well in the middle of it. Ivy and purple foxgloves clothe the walls; figs and olives and cherries grow where once the fanti of the Florentine captains lolled in their tight parti-coloured dress. The varied noises rising from the town mingle pleasantly with the humming of bees. The highest part commands a superb view over the valley of the Elsa bounded by the distant mountains, the terra itself below with, close at hand, the belle torri rising as it were in the face of their Florentine lords, and away northwards is Boccaccio-haunted Certaldo. One at least of Messer Giovanni’s fair heroines came from San Gimignano – the Isabetta whom English poets and English painters have surely made our own. Her father, it will be remembered, was a citizen of San Gimignano who had settled in Messina.

San Gimignano must be seen on some day of festa and procession, such as that solemnity of Santa Fina which is kept once in every five years on the first Sunday in August, or, more easily perhaps, on the annual celebration of the Corpus Domini. On the afternoon of the vigil of the latter day, the children wander out over the fields of all the country round for miles, returning at nightfall with baskets full of red and yellow flowers (the colours of the Commune), to be scattered in the way on the morrow. Then on the morning of the Festa, after High Mass at the Duomo, the procession passes under the Tower of the Commune, through the streets, between those grim towers, beneath the massive dark portoni, round and round the piazze. First come the various companies and confraternities of the contado with their priests and banners, then the Cappuccini with the gigantic black crucifix, followed by the canons of the Collegiata and, under the baldacchino, the Proposto bearing the Blessed Sacrament. The procession is almost exclusively composed of men and boys, the women and girls contenting themselves with scattering the red and yellow flowers before it as it advances. The crowd follows from place to place, falling down in adoration as the Sacred Host comes past. The bandsmen, the one obtrusive note of municipal modernity, with their uniforms, their white plumes and tricoloured favours, only make themselves evident at intervals, and whatever there may be of tawdriness in the decorations and the finery is lost and transfigured in the glory of the Tuscan early summer. Old Latin hymns, the Church’s heritage from the remotest Middle Ages, mingle and harmonise with the clamour of the bells that clashed out a stormo while Guelfs and Ghibellines struggled madly together in these very streets through which the waving banners move to-day, that rang a gloria for the coming of Bishop Ranieri the peacemaker, or were swung to and fro by the hands of invisible Angels when the maiden Fina died. What more would the seeker for fresh sensations in Italy desire?

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL APPENDIX

THE following short note on Books and Authorities is not intended as a complete bibliography, but simply as a guide to further information upon the subjects dealt with in the present volume, and upon others which the limited space at my disposal has compelled me to treat somewhat cursorily and summarily.

A.– HISTORY

Orlando Malavolti, Historia de’ Fatti e Guerre dei Senesi, così esterne come civili, seguite dall’ origine della lor Città, fino all’ anno M.D. LV. Venice, 1599.

Giovanni Antonio Pecci, Memorie storico-critiche della Città di Siena. Four volumes. Siena, 1755-1760. Taking its start from La vita civile di Pandolfo Petrucci, this work tells the whole history of Siena from 1480 to 1559.

The Cronica Senese in Muratori, Rerum Italicarum Scriptores, vol. xv. Milan, 1729. A series of chronicles by Andrea Dei and Agnolo di Tura (1186-1352), Neri di Donato (1352-1382), and another erroneously called Agnolo di Tura (1382-1385).

Annali Senesi (1385-1422), in Muratori, Rerum Italicarum Scriptores, vol. xix. Milan, 1731.

La Cronica di Bindino da Travale (1315-1415), edita a cura di Vittorio Lusini. Siena, 1900. Amusing reading, but of small historical importance.

Diari scritti da Allegretto Allegretti delli cose senesi del suo tempo, in Muratori, Rerum Italicarum Scriptores, vol. xxiii. Milan, 1733. Referred to in the present work as Diari Senesi; they run from 1450 to 1480.

Statuti Senesi; scritti in volgare ne’ secoli xiii. e xiv., e pubblicati secondo i testi del R. Archivio di Stato in Siena, per cura di F. L. Polidori e L. Banchi. Three volumes. Bologna, 1863, 1871, 1877.

Il Costituto del Comune di Siena, volgarizzato nel MCCCIX. e MCCCX. da Ranieri di Ghezzo Gangalandi, edito per cura di Luciano Banchi. Siena, 1874.

Giuseppe Porri, Miscellanea Storica Senese. Siena, 1844. This contains: —

(1) Il primo libro delle Istorie Senesi di Marcantonio Bellarmati.

(2) La Sconfitta di Montaperti, from the chronicles of Domenico Aldobrandini.

(3) La Sconfitta di Montaperti di Niccolò di Giovanni di Francesco Ventura. (Written in 1442. The fullest and most picturesque account of the battle from the purely Sienese point of view.)

(4) Cenni sulla Zecca Senese.

Cesare Paoli, La Battaglia di Montaperti. Siena, 1869.

Il Libro di Montaperti, pubblicato per cura di C. Paoli. Florence, 1889.

Pasquale Villari, I primi due secoli della Storia di Firenze. Two volumes. Florence, 1893, 1894.

Leonardo Bruni, Istoria Fiorentina tradotta in volgare da D. Acciaiuoli. (Containing the original Latin text and Acciaiuoli’s translation.) Three volumes. Florence, 1855-1860.

Giuseppe Rondoni, Sena Vetus o il Comune di Siena dalle origini alla battaglia di Montaperti. Turin, 1892.

Luciano Banchi, Il Piccinino nello Stato di Siena e la Lega Italica (1455-56); Ultime Relazioni dei Senesi con Papa Calisto III. In the Archivio Storico Italiano, series iv., vols. iv. and v. Florence, 1879, 1880.

Pius II., Aeneae Silvii Piccolominaei Historia Rerum Friderici Tertii Imperatoris. Strasburg, 1685.

Pius II., Pii Secundi Pontificis Maximi Commentarii Rerum Memorabilium quae temporibus suis contigerunt. Rome, 1584.

Ludwig Pastor, The History of the Popes from the Close of the Middle Ages. English translation. London, 1891-1900.

Alessandro Lisini, Relazioni tra Cesare Borgia e la Repubblica Senese (conferenza, or lecture, to the R. Accademia dei Rozzi). Siena, 1900.

Niccolò Machiavelli, Opere. The edition referred to in the present work is always that published in eight volumes at Florence (“Italia”) in 1813.

Pasquale Villari, Niccolò Machiavelli e i suoi tempi. Second edition in three volumes. Milan, 1895, 1896.

Diario delle cose avvenute in Siena dai 20 luglio 1550 ai 28 giugno 1555, scritto da Alessandro Sozzini.

La Cacciata della Guardia Spagnola da Siena d’incerto autore, 1552.

Racconti delle principali fazioni della guerra di Siena, scritti da Girolamo Roffia, 1554. These three contemporary works, with documents and appendices, are in the Archivio Storico Italiano, series i., vol. ii. Florence, 1842.

Giornale dell’ Assedio di Montalcino fatto dagli Spagnoli nel 1553 di autore anonimo. In the Archivio Storico Italiano. Appendix, vol. viii. Florence, 1850.

Commentaires du Maréchal Blaise de Montluc (edited by J. A. C. Buchon). In the Panthéon Littéraire. Paris, 1836.

The Commentaries of Messire Blaise de Montluc, Maréchal of France. Translated by C. Cotton. London, 1674.

U. G. Mondolfo, Pandolfo Petrucci: Signore di Siena. Siena, 1899.

Giuseppe Rondoni, Siena nel secolo xvi. In La Vita Italiana nel Cinquecento. Milan, 1894.

Cesare Paoli, Article on Siena in the Encyclopædia Britannica, vol. xxii. Edinburgh, 1887.

PERIODICAL PUBLICATIONS

Miscellanea Storica Senese. Siena, from 1893 onwards.

Bullettino Senese di Storia Patria. Siena.

B.– ART

J. A. Crowe and G. B. Cavalcaselle, A new History of Painting in Italy from the second to the sixteenth century. Three volumes. London, 1864. (A new edition is announced in preparation by Mr Langton Douglas.)

G. B. Cavalcaselle and J. A. Crowe, Storia della pittura in Italia dal Secolo II. al Secolo XVI. Eight volumes. Florence, 1886-1898.

Vasari, Le Vite de’ più eccellenti pittori, scultori ed architettori; con nuove annotazioni e commenti di Gaetano Milanesi. Eight volumes. Florence, 1878-1882.

Documenti per la Storia dell’ Arte Senese, raccolti ed illustrati da Gaetano Milanesi. Three volumes. Siena, 1854-1856.

Nuovi Documenti per la Storia dell’ Arte Senese, raccolti da S. Borghesi e L. Banchi. Siena, 1898.

Giovanni Morelli, Italian Painters, translated by C. J. Ffoulkes. Two volumes. London, 1891-93.

Giovanni Morelli, Della Pittura Italiana; studi storico-critici. (Same work in Italian.) Milan, 1897.

Gustavo Frizzoni, L’Arte Italiana del Rinascimento. Milan, 1891.

Bernhard Berenson. The Central Italian Painters of the Renaissance. New York and London, 1897.

C. C. Perkins, Historical Handbook of Italian Sculpture. New York, 1883.

Marcel Raymond, La Sculpture florentine. Four volumes. Florence, 1897-1901.

Carl Cornelius, Jacopo della Quercia. Halle, 1896.

Alessandro Lisini, Notizie di Duccio Pittore e della sua celebre Ancona (estratto dal Bullettino Senese di Storia Patria, anno v. fasc. 1). Siena, 1898.

Pietro Rossi, L’Arte Senese nel Quattrocento (conferenza, or lecture, to the R. Accademia dei Rozzi). Siena, 1899.

Evelyn March Phillipps, Pintoricchio. London, 1901.

Maud Cruttwell, Luca Signorelli. London, 1900.

William Heywood, A pictorial Chronicle of Siena. Siena, 1902.

R. Hobart Cust, The Pavement Masters of Siena. London, 1901.

G. W. Kitchin, Life of Pius II. (as illustrated in Pinturicchio’s frescoes). Arundel Society.

Catalogo della Galleria del R. Istituto Provinciale di Belle Arti in Siena. Siena, 1895.

C.– THE SAINTS OF SIENA

Girolamo Gigli, L’opere della Serafica Santa Caterina da Siena.

Vol. i. La Vita, translated by Bernardino Pecci from the Latin Leggenda of the Beato Raimondo da Capua (referred to in the present work as Leggenda); the letter describing her life from Stefano Maconi to Tommaso Nacci Caffarini, and the letter describing her death from Barduccio Canigiani to Suor Caterina Petriboni. Siena, 1707.

Vol. ii. and vol. iii. L’Epistole della Serafica Vergine Santa Caterina. Lucca, 1721, and Siena, 1713.

Vol. iv. Il Dialogo della Serafica Vergine, and her minor works. Siena, 1707.

Vol. v. Supplimento alla vulgata leggenda di Santa Caterina da Siena, by Tommaso Nacci Caffarini, translated by Amb. Ansano Tantucci. Lucca, 1754.

Le Lettere di Santa Caterina da Siena ridotte a miglior lezione, con proemio e note di Niccolò Tommaseo. Four volumes. Florence, 1860. (In quoting from the letters in the present work, I have always adopted the text and the numeration of this edition.)

Leggenda minore di Santa Caterina da Siena e Lettere dei suoi Discepoli, scritture inedite pubblicate da Francesco Grottanelli. The Leggenda minore was written in Latin by Tommaso Nacci Caffarini and translated into Italian by Stefano Maconi. Bologna, 1868.

Alfonso Capecelatro, Storia di Santa Caterina da Siena. Fourth edition. Siena, 1878.

Augusta T. Drane, The History of St Catherine of Siena and her Companions, with a translation of her treatise on Consummate Perfection. Two volumes. London, 1899.

F. Alessio, Storia di San Bernardino e del suo tempo. Mondovi, 1899.

P. M. Oraffi, Vita del Beato Bernardo Tolomei. Venice, 1650.

Silvano Razzi, Vite de’ Santi e Beati Toscani. Florence, 1593-1601.

Gaspero Olmi, I Senesi d’una volta. Siena, 1889.

D.– MISCELLANEOUS

Siena e il suo Territorio. Siena, 1862.

E. A. Brigidi, La Nuova Guida di Siena e dei suoi aintorni. Siena, 1901, etc.

Girolamo Gigli, Diario Senese, in cui si veggono alla giornata tutti gli avvenimenti più ragguardevoli spettanti sì allo Spirituale sì al Temporale della Città e Stato di Siena. Two volumes. Lucca, 1723.

Girolamo Gigli, La città diletta di Maria. Rome, 1716.

Giovanni Antonio Pecci, Storia del Vescovado della città di Siena. Lucca, 1748.

Scipione Bargagli, I Trattenimenti dove da vaghe donne e da giovani huomini rappresentati sono honesti e dilette voli giuochi, narrate novelle, e cantate alcune amorose canzonette. Venice, 1587.

Giuseppe Rondoni, Tradizioni popolari e leggende di un comune medioevale e del suo contado. Florence, 1886.

Lodovico Zdekauer, Lo Studio di Siena nel Rinascimento. Milan, 1894.

Lodovico Zdekauer, Il Mercante Senese nel Ducento. (A lecture with an Appendix of Documents.) Siena, 1900.