The Story of Siena and San Gimignano

The famous Deposition from the Cross (13) is an early work by Bazzi, practically the first important picture that he painted on his first coming to Siena; it is entirely in the Lombard or Milanese style, recalling the work of Luini. The scenes in the predella are by another hand. The Prayer in the Garden (2) and the Descent into Limbo (46), the remains of a series of frescoes which he painted for the Compagnia di Santa Croce, are later and have suffered from restoration; in the latter the figure of Eve is exceedingly lovely, one of those exquisite presentments of women in which this painter excels. Girolamo del Pacchia is represented by an Annunciation and Visitation (7), painted in 1518, a beautiful work, showing the influence of Albertinelli. An attractive tondo ascribed to him, the Holy Family with St Antony of Padua (35), was given back by Morelli to its proper author, Girolamo Genga. A very Perugian Nativity (26), hung as Pinturicchio, is ascribed by Mr Berenson to Balducci, by whom is also the predella (25), belonging to a picture that we shall see in Santo Spirito – an excellent little work representing the Pietà between the reception of the Stigmata by St Francis and St Catherine respectively. By Andrea del Brescianino is an uninteresting altarpiece (9), with a predella (8); while of Bartolommeo Neroni’s pictures the best is the Coronation of the Madonna (47), with its predella (49), from the church of San Francesco in Asciano.

But, of all the later Sienese, Domenico Beccafumi is best represented here. His Reception of the Stigmata by St Catherine, with St Benedict and St Jerome (22), the three smaller scenes from her life (19, 20, 21) forming its predella – her receiving the Dominican habit, her miraculous Communion, her mystical Espousals – is one of the most beautiful pictures in the whole range of Sienese art. It was painted for the Olivetan convent of St Benedict outside the Porta Tufi. “This picture,” wrote Vasari, “for its harmonious colouring and excellent modelling, was and is still greatly praised. Likewise in the predella he did certain stories in distemper with incredible spirit and vivacity, and with such facility in drawing that they could not have greater grace, and nevertheless seem done without a trouble in the world.” The treatment of light and shade is admirable. This is one of his earlier works; the Birth of Mary (6) is later and less excellent, but praised by Vasari for its effects of light. The unfinished Fall of the Rebel Angels (25), confused in composition and mannered in style, shows Beccafumi at his worst. It struck Vasari as something original, una pioggia d’ignudi molto bella, “a right lovely rain of nude figures,” and he admired and wondered at their foreshortening, certi scorti d’ignudi bellissimi. The Descent of Christ into Limbo (28), from San Francesco, is a far nobler thing – the Penitent Thief, following the Saviour, is very strikingly conceived and executed. Here also are several of Beccafumi’s cartoons for the pavement of the Duomo, chiefly scenes from the history of Moses and Aaron, with one from that of Elijah. Ascribed to him is also the tondo (34) of the Madonna and Child with two Saints.

Over the door to Stanza XI. is a frescoed Last Supper of 1595 by Bernardo Poccetti, from the Certosa di Pontignano. Stanza XI. contains a number of pictures of different schools, mostly unimportant. There are two Saints, St Mary Magdalene (3) and St Catherine of Alexandria (115) of 1512, ascribed to Fra Bartolommeo, but certainly the work of Mariotto Albertinelli; and an Annunciation (7) by the Venetian Paris Bordone. Two tondi are among the greatest treasures of the gallery: the Holy Family by Pinturicchio (45), a work of exquisite beauty and poetic sentiment; and the Adoration of the Divine Child (11) by Bazzi. The latter, painted for the Hermitage of Lecceto, is one of the earliest works that Bazzi executed in Siena, and represents, as Signor Frizzoni has noted, a certain union of Tuscan taste with the artist’s native Lombard manner.

During the last quarter of the sixteenth and the first quarter of the seventeenth century a number of capable artists upheld, not unworthily, the traditions of Sienese painting: Arcangiolo Salimbeni and his son Ventura, Alessandro Casolani, Pietro Sorri, Francesco Vanni, Francesco Rustici (Rustichino) and Rutilio Manetti, whose works are still for the most part in the churches for which they were painted. Rutilio Manetti, who died in 1639, may be regarded as the last of the great line of Sienese artists. But even in the nineteenth century the names of Giovanni Duprè, in sculpture, and Amos Cassioli (a native, like Domenico di Bartolo, of Asciano), in painting, have won renown beyond the walls of Siena.

CHAPTER V

The Campo of Siena and the Palace of the Commune

AT the heart of Siena, where its three hills meet, is the famous Piazza upon which so many of the stormiest scenes in the history of the city have been enacted: the Campo, now known officially as the Piazza Vittorio Emanuele. It is a semicircular space, the central portion paved with brick and curiously resembling the concavity of a shell bordered by a stone pavement, surrounded with what were once aristocratic palaces. It is entered by narrow streets, which in stormy times could be securely held by mere handfuls of armed men. On the southern side of the Piazza, built as it were upon the diameter of the semicircle, rises that perfect ideal of a republican home of the State – the superb Gothic Palazzo Pubblico, perhaps better known as the Palazzo Comunale or the Palazzo dei Signori. Pandolfo Petrucci conceived the idea of surrounding the Piazza with a porticato, and is said to have commissioned Baldassare Peruzzi to carry out the plan; the Balìa revived the notion at a subsequent period in 1547, long after the fall of the Petrucci, but nothing came of it.

In the Campo is the fountain, known as the Fonte Gaia from the rejoicings that hailed the advent of its waters. On Whitsunday, 1343, the water was brought into the fountain from the Fontebranda, and a fortnight of wild festivity followed. “There was such rejoicing in Siena, such dancing and such illumination,” writes the old chronicler, “that it would seem incredible if it were told, nor could anyone believe it who had not seen it.” Soon after the completion of the work a beautiful marble Venus was discovered, which is said to have borne the signature of Lysippus. The Sienese were mad with delight, and the artists rushed to worship this divine relic of antiquity —questa tanta maraviglia e tanta arte, as Ghiberti, the teller of the tale, calls it – which was finally carried in state to the fountain and enthroned upon it. But things went badly with the Republic; factions ran riot, famine and pestilence ravaged the city. The Twelve who now ruled were less liberal and more ignorant than the Nine, and at length a worthy citizen in the Senate declared that such idolatry was forbidden by the Christian faith; that all their misfortunes came from the presence of this statue, which should straightway be smashed to pieces and buried in Florentine territory. This act of vandalism appears to have been perpetrated. At least, in the Books of the Deliberations of the Concistoro there is an entry under November 7th, 1357, to the effect that the marble statue, at present placed upon the fountain of the Campo, shall be taken away as soon as possible, and dealt with in whatever way shall seem best to the Signori Dodici.69 In the following century Giacomo della Quercia was commissioned to make the marble fountain, from which he was afterwards known as Giacomo della Fonte; he produced a work which has been described as deservedly ranking “among the model fountains of the world.” The present fountain is only a modern and incomplete copy, but the mutilated remains of Giacomo’s work are still to be seen in the Opera del Duomo.

Something will have been gathered from the preceding chapters of the faction fights that have swept over the Campo and raged round the Palace. Here, too, in one of those fevers of piety that overtook the Sienese at intervals, vast crowds assembled to listen to the burning words of San Bernardino. Specially famous are the discourses that he delivered here in the August and September of 1427, immediately after he had refused the Bishopric of Siena. He had been specially urged to come, not only by the Commune, but by the Pope and the late Bishop, to allay the bitterness of the rival factions within the city. “Ah, my children!” he said, “no longer follow these parties, nor these standards, for you see to what they bring us. You have the example in the time that is passed, how evilly things have fallen out of old for many. Ah! be at peace in your own home.” And again, in his last sermon: “There still remain many peaces for us to make. I pray you hold me excused, and so I believe that you accept my excuse. You must consider that I have had many things to attend to in these sermons. Ah! for the love of God, love one another. Alas! see you not that, if you love the destruction, one of the other, what followeth to you therefrom? See you not that you are ruining your very selves? Ah! put this thing right, for the love of God; do not wait for God to lay His hands upon us with His scourge; for if you leave it to Him to do, you will be chastised for it. Love one another! What I have done, to make peace among you and to make you like brothers, I have done with that zeal that I should wish my own soul to receive. And so say I of this, as of the other things of the Commune; I have done it all to the glory and honour of God, and for the weal and salvation of your souls. As I have told you, I have treated you as true children; and I tell you more, that if I could take you by the hair, I would pacify the whole lot of you. And let no one think that I have set myself to do anything at any person’s request. I am only moved by the bidding of God, for His honour and glory.”70

Here is a scene of another kind, from the Diari of Allegretto, under July 1463, when the Duchess of Calabria with a train of Apulian nobles visited Siena:

“In honour of the said Duchess, there was arranged by the Arts a most beauteous pageant and dance at the foot of the Palace of the Signori, and there were invited as many worthy young women and girls as Siena had, who came right well adorned with robes and jewels, and young men to dance. And there was made a great she-wolf, all gilded, out of which came a morris-dance of twelve persons, right well and richly adorned, and one dressed like a nun, and they danced to a canzone that begins: ‘She won’t be a nun any more.’ And at the said dance a goodly collation was provided of marchpanes and other cates in abundance, with fruit of every kind according to the season. To the said Duchess and her nobles it seemed a fair thing and a rich pageant, and that she-wolf pleased them immensely, and they thought that we had lovely women.”

On June 19th, 1482, when the factions that preceded the expulsion of the Noveschi were at their height, a preacher of a very different stamp to Bernardino appeared upon the scenes: the future opponent of Savonarola, Fra Mariano, the favourite of the Medici. “Maestro Mariano da Genazzano,” writes Allegretto, “of the Osservanti of St Augustine, preached at the foot of the Palace of the Signori, to the Signoria, the Cardinal and all the People, the Signoria with the People having first gone to the Duomo to fetch the Madonna delle Grazie with the baldacchino. And the preacher’s introit was: Every kingdom divided against itself shall be brought to desolation, which he repeated three times, each time raising his voice higher. And when the sermon was finished, they brought back the Madonna to the Duomo with all the People.”71

No less characteristic of Siena than her faction fights and her preachers of peace are the wild games that the Sienese played, the mad races that they ran and still run round the Campo. The oldest of these was the Giuoco delle Pugna– a furious game of fisticuffs which sometimes ended seriously. In 1324, on the Sunday before the Carnival, there was a desperate giuoco delle pugna here, 600 a side, the Terzi of San Martino and Camollia engaging the Terzo di Città. The latter was driven off the ground. Then they set to with stones and sticks, and presently with swords and lances and darts, “and so great grew the uproar in the Campo that it seemed that the world was going upside down, by reason of the vast crowd that drew together.” The soldiers of the Commune, the Captain, the Podestà, the Nine strove in vain to stop it. Several of the soldiers were killed; armed men poured into the Campo; the Saracini and the Scotti, whose palaces looked out upon the scene, hurled stones from their windows, and the mob in return tried to fire their houses. The secular authority proving helpless, at length the Bishop with the priests and friars of all the religious orders in Siena came into the Campo, with a processional cross in front of them, and passed through the thick of the battle, until it slackened and the combatants drew asunder. A peculiar variety of the Giuoco delle Pugna were the Asinate or donkey-fights. These were exhibited by the contrade– those popular associations, for sport and other purposes, into which Siena is still divided. Each contrada that took part came into the Campo with its captain and ancients (allow me this Elizabethan rendering of alfieri, the youths who carry the banners of the contrade), with thirty pugillatori and an ass painted in the colours of the contrada. No arms of any sort were allowed – not even a ring on the finger – under severe penalties, corporal and financial; but almost any other sort of violence was permitted. The struggle was to force these donkeys round the Campo, in spite of all the efforts of the rival contrade, and the one that first completed two rounds was the winner. In later years the Asinate gave place to the less exciting Buffalate– races with buffaloes. Last remnants of these departed glories are races which are now run twice a year – on the festivals of our Lady’s Visitation (July 2nd) and of her Assumption (August 15th) – with mounted horses by the contrade. The race is still called the Palio, from the rich stuff (now represented by a banner) given as prize. No one who cares for Siena and the Sienese should miss any opportunity of seeing these races as often as he can; for in no other way can he enter into the peculiar spirit of this most picturesque of Tuscan peoples.72

It is a far cry from these things to Dante, to whom we owe the story of Provenzano Salvani’s act of humility in this place. But Boccaccio has given us a vivid picture of the poet himself at one of these typical Sienese entertainments, which would seem to have been a tournament in the Campo. Dante had found a little book in an apothecary’s shop, “which book was of much fame amongst men of worth, and had never yet been seen by him. And as it befell, not having leisure to take it to some other place, he leant with his breast against the bench that stood before the apothecary’s and set the book before him, and began most eagerly to examine it; and although soon after, in that very district, right before him, by occasion of some general festival of the Sienese, a great tournament was begun and carried through by certain noble youths, and therewith the mightiest din of them around – as in like cases is wont to come about, with various instruments and with applauding shouts – and although many other things took place such as might draw one to look on them, as dances of fair ladies, and many sports of youths, yet was there never a one that saw him stir thence, nor once raise his eyes from the book.”

The superb Palace of the Commune of Siena – built between 1288 and 1308 to house the Podestà with his famiglia, or household, and the members of the Signoria – is essentially the architectural and pictorial monument of the government of the Nine. Like several other Gothic palaces in the city, it is partly in grey stone, partly in red brick. Needless to say, the façade tells us a later and more comprehensive story; over every door and window is the balzana, the black and white shield of the Commune, but in the centre, between it and the lion shield of the People, are the arms of Duke Cosimo, the sign of the death of the Republic. Above all, rises the mystical monogram of the Divine Name, bringing us back to Bernardino. The tall soaring tower, known as the Torre del Mangia, was begun in 1338 and finished in 1348 or 1349; it has recently been discovered that its architects were two brothers from Perugia, Minuccio and Francesco di Rinaldo, and that the upper part was designed by the painter, Lippo Memmi, in 1341.73 The Chapel at the foot of the tower was begun in 1348, “for a certain miracle that Our Lady the Virgin Mary did” – or at least vowed in that year, as a memorial of deliverance from the Black Death, and built in the third quarter of the fourteenth century. The upper part, with its beautiful frieze of griffins, is the work of Antonio Federighi, and dates from 1460. The statues of saints in their niches merely show to what depths Sienese sculpture had sunk by the latter part of the fourteenth century, before the rise of Giacomo della Quercia. The ruined and restored fresco is Bazzi’s last work in Siena. He promised in 1537 that he would have it done by the Feast of Our Lady in August for 60 golden scudi, but went off for a holiday to Piombino after beginning it, and did not return to complete the work till the following year. The door behind the chapel leads into a picturesque and deserted court, with a faded fifteenth century fresco and a number of old armorial bearings on the walls.

The Lupa of gilded bronze on the column to the right of the Palace marks the entrance to the apartments of the Signoria. Over the door, two very lean wolves are adoring the crowned Lion of the People. We ascend the steps to the first floor, into a magnificent series of rooms, glowing with masterpieces of Sienese painting. The first room – variously called the Sala delle Balestre, the Sala del Mappamondo, and the Sala del Gran Consiglio– is now a law-court. Here at one epoch the Consiglio della Campana, or Senate, at others the minor councils of the State met. The whole wall above the place of the president of the court is occupied by a vast fresco by Simone Martini painted in 1315, “right marvellously coloured,” as Ghiberti calls it. Our Lady, enthroned as Queen of Siena, is holding up the Divine Child standing on her knees to bless the deliberations of the Council; Apostles and the Baptist hold the poles of the canopy, Virgin Martyrs and Angels stand in attendance, while two kneeling Angels offer flowers on behalf of Siena’s four sainted patrons – Ansanus, Savinus, Crescentius and Victor. All the faces have the winning sweetness and spiritual loveliness that we find throughout the works of the Sienese school. At the foot of the throne is a poetical inscription: “The angelical flowers, roses and lilies, wherewith the celestial meadow is adorned, do not delight me more than good counsels. But sometimes I see one who, to exalt himself, despises me and deceives my city; and when he speaks worse, he is more praised by each one whom these words condemn.” And along the base of the picture is their Queen’s answer to the prayers of the Saints: “My beloved ones, be assured that I will make your devout chaste prayers content, as you shall wish. But if the potent oppress the weak, harassing them with shames and harms, your prayers are not for these, nor for whoso deceives my city.”

Such being the ideal basis of Siena’s policy, we are now given a series of her victories. On the opposite wall, painted by Simone in 1328, is a mediaeval warrior, Guidoriccio, riding alone, fully armed save for the head, his baton of command in his hand, his steed gorgeously caparisoned. The face is an admirable piece of portraiture. Behind him lie the camp of the Sienese and the captured castle from which the banner of the Commune floats. On either hand are preparations for storming the town in front; but he proudly rides forward alone, to summon it to surrender. Guidoriccio dei Fogliani of Reggio was elected Captain of War in Siena for six months in 1326, and afterwards confirmed so many times in the office that he kept it for seven years. In 1328, when the power of Castruccio degli Interminelli was at its height in Tuscany, he led the Sienese against Montemassi (the town represented in the fresco), repulsed the forces sent by Castruccio to its relief and forced it to surrender. In 1329 he put down a formidable bread-riot in the Campo, and in 1331 he won a great victory over the Pisans under the walls of Massa, after which he had himself dubbed a knight on the field of battle and returned to Siena in triumph. He died in 1352, and the Commune gave him a sumptuous public funeral in San Domenico.

Two later battle-scenes are on the wall opposite the windows. First is the great victory gained by the Sienese over the Company of the Cappello in October 1363, at Torrita, in the Valdichiana. After a vain attempt to come to terms, the Sienese hired four hundred German men-at-arms, and took the field with the forces of the city and the contado under Ceccolo degli Orsini, the Captain-General of the Commune. Before marching out of Siena, the republican army was put under the protection of St Paul the Apostle – apparently because the Christian name of the then Prior of the Twelve was Paolo. Orders had been given not to risk a battle; but, as soon as they came up with the enemy, the Germans set upon them, and the Captain with the Sienese following, a complete victory was gained. On the left of the fresco St Paul, with drawn sword, is seated at the gate of Siena, surrounded by warrior Angels. We see the advancing host of the Sienese, in front of which the splendid mercenary cavalry has already burst upon the ranks of the Company and broken through them, while on the right the rout is complete. The Sienese treated their prisoners magnificently; they deprived Ceccolo of his command, for having disobeyed their orders, but knighted him and heaped honours and presents upon him. The Twelve gave a solemn banquet in the Palace to him and his officers, presented him with a palfrey covered with silk, a sword of honour, a suit of armour and a golden crown, with double pay to his troops and household. A solemn Mass was celebrated in the Duomo, with great offerings to the miraculous Madonna, and the Twelve commissioned Lippo di Vanni to paint the fresco in memory of the glorious event. The second fresco, more than a hundred years later, was painted by Giovanni di Cristofano and Francesco d’Andrea in 1480, a record of the epoch when Duke Alfonso of Calabria was virtually the arbiter of Siena’s destinies. It represents the battle of Poggio Imperiale, near Poggibonsi, in September 1479, the chief action in the war in which Duke Ercole of Ferrara held the baton of command of the Italian league that defended Florence against the allied powers of Rome and Naples, led by the Dukes of Calabria and Urbino. In the temporary absence of Ercole from the seat of war, Alfonso stormed the camp of the league. The painters have represented it as a triumph of Siena over Florence. On the left the Florentines are flying from the field, their condottiere Costanzo Sforza leading the rout, and the standard of the red lily is being lowered from every battlement and tower. Beneath the banners of the Church, Naples and Siena, the allies – led by “El Possa,” a Sienese named Domenico di Michele, who was in the service of the Duke of Calabria – are driving the defeated army before them; in the centre are Alfonso and the Duke of Urbino; reinforcements are advancing on the right, while in the background the light armed foot-soldiers are sacking the Florentine tents.

On the wall under the portrait of Guidoriccio is the famous old picture of the Madonna from San Domenico, by Guido da Siena. The date upon the picture appears originally to have been 1281. The frescoes on either side – St Ansanus baptising the Sienese and St Victor protecting the shield of Liberty – are by Bazzi, painted in 1529. The blessed Bernardo Tolomei, founder of Monte Oliveto, is also Bazzi’s, painted in 1534. These three figures – with their lovely attendant putti– are among the finest of his works. Between the next two arches are San Bernardino by Sano di Pietro and St Catherine by Vecchietta. The last of the series, B. Ambrogio Sansedoni, is more modern.