Renaissance Art and Artist Trip to Siena, Italy

 
Siena, about an hour's drive south of Florence, will take the traveler into the celebrated landscape of Tuscany. It is fitting, then, that we find here one of the earliest landscape paintings in Renaissance art, executed by Ambrogio Lorenzetti in the Palazzo Pubblico from 1337-40. In comparison to Florentine art, Sienese art is typically more delicate of line, materially opulent, and fairly glows with gold and warm reds.

Fourteenth-century Siena had great dreams for itself before political decline set in: there was an arrogant plan, for example, to expand the Duomo so that the current nave would have been but a transept of the new church. The project, interrupted by the arrival of the Black Death, stands in unfinished grandeur next to the old church. If you can tolerate vigorous stairclimbing and vertiginous heights, climb up to marvel at Siena and its surrounding countryside, still preserved much as it appears in medieval paintings, and basking in the gentle light of Tuscany.

Ambrogio Lorenzetti, Sala dei Nove, Palazzo Pubblico

The Palazzo Pubblico, which dominates the sloping, red-brick campo, has functioned as the seat of government in Siena since the late Middle Ages. It was built during Siena 's Golden Age (1287-1355), a period during which its ruling oligarchy forged an alliance with ever-troublesome Florence , and the city enjoyed peace and economic good fortune. The arts flourished as well, and the best painters were summoned to decorate the chambers of the fortress-like palace. Lorenzetti's frescoes decorate a small chamber known as the Sala dei Nove (Room of the Nine). Here the highest magistrates of the city convened -- their actions, it was hoped, elevated by the picture of ideal government painted on its walls.


The Nine probably sat under the fresco of The Virtues of Good Government on the north wall. You will see a number of lovely (though admittedly stiff) labeled figures: look for Justice with her scales; Wisdom with her book; and Concord with her rope, held in harmony by twenty-four citizens. To the right, a bearded man represents the Commune of Siena. He holds a medallion of the Virgin Mary, patron saint of the city, and is surrounded by personifications of the cardinal and theological Virtues. All this is very medieval in symbolic message -- but look to the east wall decorated with The Effects of Good Government in the City and Countryside. For here the abstract symbolism gives way, and Siena of the past comes alive through the artist's eye and brush.

 

We know this pictured city is Siena, because the church at the left upper corner has the distinctive black and white striping of the Duomo. This is a city at peace, reaping the benefits of just government: note the group of dancing girls, circling gracefully, and the tradesmen and women, selling everyday necessities such as shoes and foodstuffs. A great crenellated wall separates city from countryside (so different from today's suburban sprawl), and travelers upon the rural road are protected by the winged figure of Security hovering above. Nobles ride on horseback, pack animals sag under their loads, even a boar meanders tamely along. The surrounding hills are planted in even rows, farm workers harvest grain in the fields, and fresh water flows cleanly through the landscape. Okay, so it was probably never this good, but the artist gives us a portrait of the city and its countryside at its imagined best.


On the opposite wall is depicted The Allegory of Bad Government and its Effects in the City and Countryside. This fresco is much less well-preserved, due to water damage. Whereas on the opposite wall we had the Commune of Siena surrounded by Virtues, now we have horned Tyranny and his court of schemers and Vices. Depravity and decay rule in the unjust city: note the crumbling buildings, and a woman bleeding on the ground from a stab wound to her heart. At the city gate, a ghastly figure of Fear holds aloft a long sword, and bears white teeth against her blackened face. In the countryside, soldiers run riot. Houses burn, the hills yield no food. The fresco cycle, then, gives vision to good or bad government by the Nine: was Siena to be blessed by peace, or ravaged by war? Well-fed or starved? As it was, the Nine did well by Siena , but no government could protect Italy from the coming of the Black Death.