and in the following year to cast two bronze scenes, storie, for the same. But here again he undertook things elsewhere—in Bologna, this time—and the Signoria had to compel him to finish what he had begun, which he did in 1434. In the meanwhile, he had accomplished his supreme work at Bologna in the bas-reliefs on the pilasters of the door of San Petronio—those marvellous scenes from the Book of Genesis, in which he seems to anticipate the achievement of Michelangelo in the Cappella Sistina. Giacomo died at Siena in 1438. His style is grand and austere, full of force and vigour, with a kind of rugged greatness that contrasts curiously with the manner of contemporary Sienese painters; he dispenses with accessories, concentrating the interest upon the human figures in his stories. There is peculiar nobility and power in his treatment of the nude. “Sooth to say, Giacomo had only one pupil, and for him there was a century to wait; he was Michelangelo.”[61]

No other Sienese sculptor of the Quattrocento approaches Giacomo’s solitary greatness. Pietro del Minella (1391-1458) was his favourite pupil and assistant, but caught little of his spirit. The two Turini—Turino di Sano and his son Giovanni (1384-1455)—were associated with him on the work for the Baptistery, and acquitted themselves creditably, even by the side of Donatello and Ghiberti. Then come two men of greater mark: Antonio Federighi (died about 1480), and Lorenzo di Pietro (1412-1480), called Il Vecchietta. The former, who is said to have been connected with the Tolomei, was also an architect, as the “grandiose simplicity” of the Loggia that he built for Pius II. shows; as a sculptor, he is perhaps the most classical of the Sienese masters of the Quattrocento, following not unworthily in the steps of both Giacomo della Quercia and Donatello. Vecchietta appears to have been actually Giacomo’s pupil; his principal works are in bronze, somewhat hard and dry in style, with excessive attention to anatomical details. Giovanni di Stefano (died after 1498) and Urbano da Cortona (died 1504), by the latter of whom are some tolerable works in the Duomo and elsewhere, are conscientious scarpellini, with no original genius. To Francesco di Giorgio Martini (1439-1502), the pupil of Vecchietta, are ascribed—frequently on no adequate grounds—a number of the chief buildings in Siena in the style of the earlier Renaissance; as a military architect, he stands high among the craftsmen of his century, and was much employed by the Dukes of Urbino. Like his master Vecchietta, he was also a worker in bronze and a painter. Of his fellow-pupil Neroccio di Bartolommeo Landi (1447-1500), it will be best to speak among the painters; his few extant works in sculpture have a peculiar combination of dignity and sweetness, which is at once impressive and winning. Giacomo Cozzarelli (1453-1515) was a pupil of Francesco di Giorgio; he designed the famous palace of Pandolfo Petrucci and made those wonderful torch-holders and other metal work for its exterior, which are only surpassed by Caparra’s masterpieces in this kind on the palace of Filippo Strozzi at Florence. Lorenzo di Mariano, called Il Marrina (died in 1534), is the last great sculptor of the Sienese Renaissance; as a decorator in marble he has few if any equals, and his masterpiece in the oratory of Fontegiusta need not fear the comparison with the best Florentine work of the epoch.

Nor should we pass from the sculptors without a word on the wood-carvers, who are among the minor artistic glories of Siena. Domenico di Niccolò (who died about 1450), called Del Coro from his work in the chapel of the Palazzo del Comune, Antonio Barili (died 1516), and Giovanni Barili (died 1529), produced work in this kind which is hardly surpassed in any Italian city of the Renaissance.

The Jesuit art-historian Lanzi characterised the Sienese school of painters as lieta scuola fra lieto popolo, “a blithe school among a blithe people,” and added that their principal works were to be found in the churches of the city. Needless to say that the latter remark no longer holds, and we shall do best to begin our consideration of the painters in the well-arranged picture gallery of the Reale Istituto Provinciale di Belle Arti.

The first great epoch in Sienese painting, as in sculpture, is contemporaneous with the government of the Nine and ends with the outbreak of the pestilence of 1348. The moving spirit of this period, the true founder of the Sienese school, is Duccio di Buoninsegna. Recent researches have shown that he was born shortly before the battle of Montaperti, and that his artistic activity extends from 1278 to 1313.[62] It will be better to speak more fully of his work when we stand before his masterpiece in the Opera del Duomo, that picture which, in Ghiberti’s words, “was made right excellently and learnedly, and is a magnificent thing.” Bringing the Byzantine manner to its utmost perfection for the purpose of religious illustration, Duccio gave imperishable form to what had been more or less traditional through the previous centuries of Christian art. He is to the Middle Ages what Raphael was to be to the Renaissance. Segna di Tura di Buoninsegna, who was working in the early years of the fourteenth century, was Duccio’s pupil, perhaps his nephew; he imitated the manner of his master, but somewhat ineffectually. Simone Martini, on the other hand, followed worthily in Duccio’s footsteps; with an exquisite sense of beauty and a love of splendid decorative effects in colour, he is perhaps the most typical master of “soft Siena,” doing for her in line and colour what Folgore had done in rhyme. He died in 1344. With him as assistant worked his brother-in-law, Lippo Memmi; “they were gentle masters,” wrote Ghiberti, “and their pictures were done with the greatest diligence, right delicately finished.” This epoch culminates in the two Lorenzetti—Pietro and his younger brother Ambrogio—both of whom appear to have been among the victims of the pestilence. Ambrogio especially, famosissimo e singularissimo maestro, as Ghiberti calls him, nobilissimo componitore, is the greatest and most imaginative painter that Siena has produced. In the splendid allegorical frescoes with which he adorned the palace chamber of the Signori Nove and in his glowing altarpieces, in material beauty and spiritual significance, he reaches a height unattained by any other Italian painter of his century—save only the mighty Florentine, Andrea Orcagna.

In the Stanza Prima—dei Primitivi—we have first a number of pictures of the Pre-Duccian epoch. The altarpiece (1), partly in stucco in half relief and in the Byzantine style, is peculiarly interesting from its date, 1215, as showing us the state of art in Tuscany in the very year of the traditional outbreak of the Guelf and Ghibelline factions in Florence. The very curious paintings (4 and 5), belonging to the thirteenth century, may be taken as next-to-contemporary representations of the scenes from the lives of St Francis and St Clare and Blessed Andrea Gallerani which they include (besides St Bartholomew, St Catherine of Alexandria, and St Dominic); St Clare repulsing Manfred’s Saracens

from her convent by the Sacred Host is unique in so early a picture. We may here mention that Andrea Gallerani, a frequently recurring figure in Sienese art, was a nobleman of Siena, who died in 1251. He had killed a man for blaspheming and was exiled, but afterwards returned and devoted himself to works of mercy and charity, founding the Spedale della Misericordia, which was later united to the great Spedale di Sta. Maria della Scala. Next comes a series of paintings in the Byzantine manner: two somewhat imposing altarpieces to the honour of the Baptist and the Prince of the Apostles respectively (14 and 15); smaller scenes (8 to 13), showing the sort of thing that Duccio glorified and perfected a little later. Duccio himself is represented by six authentic pictures; an early work on a small scale (20), the Madonna and Child with Angels and Franciscan friars; three Saints (22, 23); an important and characteristic picture of the Madonna and Child with St Peter and St Dominic, St Paul and St Augustine, Christ blessing from above and Angels bearing sceptres that end in threefold lilies in token of the Trinity (28); a triptych (35), including scenes from the lives of Christ and His Mother that anticipate in some sort the illustrative power of his masterpiece in the Opera del Duomo; a large altarpiece in many divisions (47), in which the Blessed Virgin is honoured under two of the titles assigned to her in the Litany of Loreto—“Queen of Patriarchs,” “Queen of Prophets.” By Segna di Tura are several pictures of no great importance; part of an altar-piece (40); a Madonna (44); St Ansanus (42); and St Galganus (43). It may be well to mention that St Ansanus, according to the legend, was the first Apostle of Siena, a Roman patrician who suffered in the persecution of Diocletian; St Galganus lived in the twelfth century, was guided by St Michael into the wilderness, and when prevented by the devil from cutting wood to make a cross he struck his sword into the hard rock, which became soft as wax to receive it and then harder than adamant to retain it, and built a hermitage at the spot. He is usually pictured as here by Segna—a young knight with flowing golden hair, the miraculous sword forming on the rocky desert place the sacred sign of Redemption. Simone Martini is not represented in the Gallery; but there is an altarpiece (51) ascribed to Lippo Memmi, and fairly characteristic of the religious art of fourteenth century Siena. A well-preserved picture in the following room (11), with St Michael as central figure, shows something of Lippo’s manner, but is not a work of the master himself.

In the second room there is a noble collection of paintings by the Lorenzetti. By the elder brother Pietro are: the Assumption of the Madonna (5), with the doubting Thomas receiving the sacred girdle; the Madonna and Child enthroned (21), with a lovely band of Angels clustering round the throne; four small scenes from the history of the Order of the Carmelities (28, 29), being apparently the remains of the predella of a famous picture that Pietro painted for the church of the Carmine in 1329. The younger Lorenzetti, Ambrogio, is represented by three masterpieces. The smallest of these (9) is a perfect gem of early Sienese art; the Madonna is enthroned with both her arms folded round the Divine Child, who unfolds a scroll to the four Latin Doctors kneeling in adoration, each receiving His doctrine with a wonderful expression of rapt devotion, ecstasy and yearning—but each in a totally different way; the golden haired Virgin Martyrs, Catherine with her wheel, Dorothy with her flowers, are standing in attendance on the Queen, and there are six adoring Angels above. The large altar-piece (2) is a striking and imposing work; the Madonna and Child are attended by the Magdalene and St Dorothy and the two St Johns, while below is the Deposition from the Cross: the heads are full of beauty and expression, and the Deposition shows Ambrogio’s dramatic power. The Annunciation (33), dated the 17th of December 1344, appears to be Ambrogio’s last extant work; it was painted for the Palazzo del Comune and, in addition to the painter’s name, is inscribed with those of the Camarlingo—Don Francesco, monk of St Galganus—the three Esecutori and the Scrittore or scribe.[63] High up on the wall above this picture are two half figures of saints (34, 36), damaged, but genuine Ambrogios. Ascribed to Pietro Lorenzetti is a curious allegory (37), apparently of the story of sin and the Atonement of the Cross.

As in sculpture, so in painting, a decline set in after 1348. In the latter part of the fourteenth century worked Giacomo di Mino del Pellicciaio, Lippo di Vanni, Bartolo di Maestro Fredi (who died in 1410), Barna or Berna, Luca di Tommè, Paolo di Giovanni, Andrea di Vanni. They are somewhat mediocre artists, far below the Lorenzetti, from whom they not unfrequently borrow motives; still, as religious illustrators, they follow to the best of their limited powers the greater men who had gone before. Andrea di Vanni is an exceedingly interesting personality; he was a man of mark in the counsels of the Riformatori, served the State as ambassador and in other capacities, and was a fervent disciple of St Catherine, who addressed several letters to him and whose portrait he painted. Barna can only be studied at San Gimignano, and the picture ascribed to Andrea di Vanni (59) is not one of his few authenticated works. But Bartolo di Maestro Fredi is represented in this Stanza II. by a whole series of paintings (42 to 49); by Luca di Tommè is a signed and dated picture of 1367 (54), in which the central group of St Anne with a very sweet and girlish Madonna has great charm; Paolo di Giovanni’s Nativity of the Blessed Virgin (61), partly imitated from a picture by Pietro Lorenzetti, is bright and pleasant in colour and feeling; by Giacomo di Mino is a triptych (90). This room contains also some good and characteristic works of the Florentine school of the Trecento; a Madonna with the Magdalene and St Catherine of Alexandria and Angels (52), signed by Taddeo Gaddi; the Death and Coronation of the Madonna (64, 70), by Spinello Aretino. The connecting link between this group of Sienese artists and the painters of the Quattrocento is found in Taddeo di Bartolo (1363-1422), the pupil of Bartolo di Fredi. With no striking originality nor any great power, Taddeo was a conscientious and meritorious painter, whose works show a deep religious feeling, and who exercised considerable influence upon the Sienese school of his day. Most of the greater painters of the succeeding epoch may be said to have proceeded, directly or indirectly, from his school. By Taddeo di Bartolo, besides a number of smaller pictures, there is in this room one large altar-piece in several divisions (76), signed and dated 1409, of which the central scene is the Annunciation with St Cosmas and St Damian, the patron saints of the medical profession.

Sienese painting in the fifteenth century is distinguished by its mystical tone and its exceedingly conservative, not to say retrogressive, spirit. No preoccupation with scientific researches, no problems of movement or anatomy, disturbed the calm of the Sienese painters; we meet with hardly any portraiture in their work, and even less mythology. These most turbulent of Italian people who, in De Commines’ famous phrase, “are ever in division, and govern their commonwealth more fondly than any other town in Italy,” chose that their painters should give them art that was exclusively the handmaid of religion. While foreign sculptors, such as Donatello and Ghiberti, were welcomed and employed in Siena, foreign painters were practically excluded until the last two decades of the century. Great spiritual beauty in faces, accuracy of drawing within certain limits, with a profusion and a lavishness in the use of gold and the most brilliant colours (this the Sienese particularly demanded of their painters), characterise the school at this epoch. Their strength and their weakness alike are shown in that their most typical painter is styled the “Sienese Fra Angelico,” while there never was, at least to any good effect, a Sienese Masaccio. The chief painters whose work falls into this period are: Sano di Pietro (1406-1481), Domenico di Bartolo (whose few extant works are dated from 1433 to 1443), Giovanni di Paolo (died in 1482), the sculptor Lorenzo di Pietro, called Il Vecchietta (1412-1480), Stefano di Giovanni called Sassetta (died in 1450). And then, following after these, a second group: Matteo di Giovanni, who was born about 1435 and died in 1495; Francesco di Giorgio Martini (1439-1502), Neroccio di Bartolommeo Landi (1447-1500), Benvenuto di Giovanni (1436-1518)—these three the pupils of Lorenzo di Pietro.

These painters and their contemporaries are represented in the four following rooms of the gallery. In Stanza III., a curious little panel by Domenico di Bartolo (19), with a devout inscription in honour of the Madonna, signed Dominicus and dated 1433, contrasts strongly with the more typical Sienese works that surround it. The composition, the types of Angels, the naked Child, all show ill-assimilated Florentine influences. The Child in its unidealised humanity is the first nude infant in Sienese art; all Sano’s babes, for instance, are more or less clothed, already dreaming divine dreams. Domenico was a native of Asciano who came to Siena, and is said to have become the pupil of Taddeo di Bartolo; all his work, however, is a kind of protest against the mystical Sienese tradition in painting. Certain great frescoes of his, which we shall see later in the Spedale, stand alone in the story of the art of Siena. Then follow some small pictures by Sassetta (21 to 24), fairly representative. Giovanni di Paolo—a prolific and always agreeable, if somewhat monotonous and weak painter—is more fully represented here, in a series of Madonnas and Saints, scriptural scenes and mediaeval legends. Two of his pictures (28 and 55) are signed and dated 1453 and 1440 respectively. His Last Judgment (27), the predella of a picture painted for San Domenico in 1445, is particularly interesting; much of it is the usual tradition, but the Paradiso on our left is full of most poetical and fanciful details, slightly reminding us of Angelico’s work in the Florentine Academy, but conceived in a curiously different spirit. The scenes from the life of St Galganus (53) are a favourable example of his ingenuous narrative power. When Il Vecchietta turns from sculpture to painting, he lays aside his science and follows the Sienese tradition with the rest. His San Bernardino (63) has considerable interest, being to all intents and purposes a contemporary portrait. A large altarpiece, badly preserved (67), is one of the works that he painted as an offering for the church of the Spedale, and is signed: “The work of Laurentius Petri, sculptor, alias El Vecchietta, for his devotion.” The shrine, painted on both sides with figures of Andrea Gallerani and other Sienese saints, comes from the same place. We may notice the Madonna and Child with St Francis and St Dominic (66), by Pier Francesco Fiorentino, a Florentine priest who painted in the latter part of the fifteenth century, and who shows himself as reactionary as any master of Siena; his works abound at San Gimignano and throughout the Val d’Elsa. Mr Berenson ascribes to him the four little trionfi at the other end of the present room—the Triumphs of Death, Chastity, Love and Fame (4 to 7), partly after Petrarch—which were at one time erroneously attributed to Andrea di Vanni.

The next two rooms, Stanza IV. and Stanza V., are entirely devoted to Sano di Pietro. Sano, or Ansano, is the most mystical, the most genuinely inspired by religious devotion, of all the painters of Siena; like Fra Angelico, his life was in perfect harmony with his art, pictor famosus et homo totus deditus Deo—so is he described in the document that registers his death—“a famous painter and a man utterly dedicated to God”; but, unlike Angelico, he was a married man and a father of children. In these two rooms he can be thoroughly studied in all his phases. His brush moves in a somewhat restricted field. It is always the Madonna with her Divine Child, surrounded by saints and adored by Seraphim, now listening to the music of attendant Angels, now crowned by her Son with the diadem of Paradise. Or we have saints, men and women, rapt in ecstasy and already of another world. Sometimes monks or nuns are introduced, kneeling at Our Lady’s feet or worshipping her Child, or the portrait of the donor—frequently (as in number 9 of Stanza IV.) some devout nun who had it painted “for the soul of her father and of her mother”; but such figures are always very small indeed, as though to reduce the human element to a minimum. The faces are always very sweet—the Angels, with the flame of the Holy Spirit resting upon their foreheads, perhaps especially so—the colours are of that almost shadowless brightness that the Sienese loved. Among the Sienese saints introduced we may notice (Stanza IV., 25) the founder of the Gesuati, the Beato Giovanni Colombini, kneeling at the Madonna’s feet; he was a leader in the religious life of Tuscany when St Catherine was a child, and the Colombini were connected by marriage with the Benincasa.

One picture in Stanza IV. (20) is unique among Sano’s works, and may be described as a mystical treatment of contemporary history. Pope Calixtus III. is enthroned in full pontifical robes, his cope being buckled with the Borgia arms, while below appears Siena with the Tower of the Palazzo and the Campanile of the Duomo; mules are being driven into the city, laden with sacks of grain marked with the balzana, the muleteer being armed and looking round in fear to see if he is pursued. In the clouds the Madonna appears, to commend her city to the Holy Father, a scroll bearing her words: “O worthy Pastor to my Christian people, to thee henceforth do I render the care of Siena; to her let all thy kindly feeling turn.” And we have his answer: “Virgin Mother, dear Consort to God, if thy Calixtus is worthy of so great a gift, nought save death shall sever me from Siena.” Though somewhat hastily painted, and though the character of Calixtus is hardly more realised than in the case of Giotto’s popes, the historical interest of the picture, which was executed for the Palazzo Pubblico, is considerable. In 1455, when Piccinino the great condottiere—in secret understanding with Giberto da Correggio, the commander of the Sienese forces, and with Ghino di Pietro Bellanti and other traitors within the walls—was preparing to make war upon the Republic, Calixtus (Alfonso Borgia), then newly-elected Pope, took Siena under his protection and sent the ecclesiastical forces to its support. He urged the Sienese to prosecute the war to the bitter end, declared that their cause was his own. “We shall maintain inviolate your own and the common peace and quiet of all Italy,” he said to the Captain of the People and the Priors of the Commune in a bull dated August 14th, 1455, “even to the shedding of our own blood, if needs be.” “You have a Pope,” wrote Enea Silvio Piccolomini (who was not yet Cardinal), a few days later to the Balìa, “most affectionate towards

your Republic, as you perceive; know how to take advantage of it, for his courage is as great as his charity, nor has he anything at heart save justice.”[64] When the Balìa wanted to compromise and make peace, Calixtus would not hear of it, but sent abundant grain and provisions into the hungry city. This is the situation represented in the picture, which may confidently be dated 1455; but a comparison with the Pope’s medals shows that Sano has hardly done justice to the rather striking features of the first Pope of the House of Borgia.

There is an analogous picture by Sano in Stanza V., San Bernardino (2) as champion of the devotion of the Holy Name, as the inscription, “I have manifested Thy Name to men,” indicates. Painted in 1460, sixteen years after the Saint’s death, it is less a contemporary portrait than that by Lorenzo di Pietro. All the other pictures in this room are in Sano’s usual mystical style. There is an interval of thirty years between the date of the Madonna of San Biagio (4), the saintly Bishop whose miracles and martyrdom are so quaintly depicted in the predella, and that of the Assumption (8, 9); but there is little, if any, advance in technique or development in style. But no sympathetic student of Sienese painting can ever find Sano di Pietro monotonous, or otherwise than fascinating.

In Stanza VI., a picture by Sano di Pietro (2) in the composition of the principal scene—the Madonna and Child surrounded by kneeling Saints—shows a certain resemblance to Fra Angelico. In the Crucifixion above, St Francis is receiving the stigmata, and two Franciscan nuns are aiding the holy women to tend the Blessed Virgin; the predella, however, is by a later hand. The chief contents of this room are the works of Matteo di Giovanni, on the whole the most powerful and most versatile Sienese painter of the fifteenth century, and Neroccio di Bartolommeo Landi, a “Simone come to life again” in the air of the Renaissance.[65] By the former are three beautiful Madonnas (5, 7, 9), somewhat varied in type and style. By the latter, whose figures are stately and gracious like those of his statues, very sweet and winning in expression, are the large enthroned Madonna and Saints (8); four smaller pictures (11, 13, 14, 22), in two of which no one can fail to be struck with the painter’s exquisite realisation of the personality of St Catherine; and the signed and dated Madonna and Child of 1476, with St Michael and San Bernardino (19), one of the master’s earlier works. Francesco di Giorgio Martini is represented by three very small pictures (15, 16, 17) of Old Testament scenes, an Annunciation (21), and three Madonnas (20, 23, 24). We have also some interesting works by lesser masters. By Pietro di Domenico (1457-1501), who was influenced by the Umbrians, is the Adoration of the Shepherds with St Galganus and St Martin (3), the Galganus having struck his sword into the rock at the Divine Child’s feet; the date seems to read 1400, only because the latter part has been obliterated. By Guidoccio Cozzarelli (1450-1516) are a Saint Sebastian (25) and Our Lady as protector of the Arts (29), the Queen of the Artisans.

Stanza VII. contains unimportant fragments and engravings.

With the opening of the Cinquecento, Siena grew dissatisfied with the antiquated methods of her native artists. Three mediocre painters, indeed, carried on their traditional manner well into the sixteenth century: Bernardino Fungai (1460-1516), Girolamo di Benvenuto (1470-1524), the son of Benvenuto di Giovanni, and Giacomo Pacchiarotti (1474-1540), Fungai’s pupil, a turbulent fellow, whose pusillanimous, half-crazy attempts to pose as a political revolutionary are immortalised in a novella by Pietro Fortini and a poem by Robert Browning. But in the meanwhile, better masters had been brought to Siena from other cities; Luca Signorelli and his pupil, Girolamo Genga, from Cortona and Urbino, had come to decorate the palace of the Magnifico; Bernardino Pinturicchio of Perugia had been hired by the Piccolomini, and his great fellow-citizen, Pietro Perugino, was painting altarpieces for Sant’Agostino and San Francesco.

And, greater than any of these, there came one whom Siena made her own: Giovanni Antonio Bazzi (1477-1549), presently to be known as Sodoma. The son of an artisan of Vercelli, Bazzi had gone to Milan and fallen under the influence of Leonardo da Vinci, though it is doubtful whether he actually became his pupil. In 1501 certain merchants, agents of the Spannocchi, brought the young man to Siena, with which city—save for the short period from 1508 to 1510, when he worked in Rome mainly for the rich Sienese banker, Agostino Chigi—he was henceforth associated. Morelli regarded Bazzi as “the most important and gifted artist of the school of Leonardo—the one who is most easily confounded with the great master himself.” Frequently careless and very unequal in his execution, the exquisite beauty of his women’s faces can hardly be surpassed; and “in his best moments, when he brought all his powers into play, Sodoma produced works which are worthy to rank with the most perfect examples of Italian art.”[66] He was a wild and reckless fellow enough in his life, passionately addicted to horse-racing, and a lover of strange beasts and birds. Of these latter he kept a whole collection round him, great and small of every kind that he could get, until, in Vasari’s phrase, “his house seemed verily to be the Ark of Noah.” In a list of his goods which Bazzi drew up for taxation in 1531, eight race-horses and a number of these other creatures are set down, and the catalogue ends—may my fair readers pardon me the quotation!—with “tre bestiacce cattive, che son tre donne.”

These varied influences combined with that of Florence to produce eclecticism; “a most singular and charming eclecticism, saved from the pretentiousness and folly usually controlling such movements by the sense for grace and beauty even to the last seldom absent from the Sienese.”[67] The three principal Sienese painters of this kind are Girolamo del Pacchia (1477-1535), Baldassare Peruzzi (1481-1536), and Domenico di Giacomo di Pace (1486-1550), called Mecarino or Beccafumi. Girolamo del Pacchia was the son of a Hungarian father and a Sienese mother; he learned the first principles of art in Siena (probably from Fungai), and then went to Florence and Rome, returning to Siena in 1508 where he soon fell under Bazzi’s influence. Like Pacchiarotti (with whom he used to be confused) Girolamo became involved in plots and conspiracies, and was forced to fly from Siena. Baldassare Peruzzi is one of the most famous architects of the Renaissance. As a painter he first worked under Pinturicchio, then went to Rome where he laboured much for the Popes and Agostino Chigi, falling under the influence of Bazzi and later of Raphael, whom he succeeded as chief architect of San Pietro. In the sack of Rome he was taken by the Spaniards, cruelly tortured, and escaped to Siena in a state of abject poverty. The Sienese made him public architect to the Republic, and afterwards Capomaestro of the Duomo. There are a number of buildings attributed to him in Siena, mostly doubtful. He ended his days in the Eternal City, working on the fabric of San Pietro. Of Baldassare’s paintings Siena only possesses a few of his earliest and some of his very latest. Domenico di Giacomo was the son of a contadino on the estate of Lorenzo Beccafumi (whom we have already met in the political field) in the plain of the Cortine near Montaperti. Lorenzo found him, like Giotto, drawing on the sand and stones the movements of the animals under his charge, took him into his household, had him taught to paint, and gave him his own family name. “Domenico was a virtuous and excellent person,” says Vasari, “and studious in his art, but excessively solitary.” He worked at Rome, Genoa and other places, but told his friend and admirer, Vasari, that he could do nothing away from the air of Siena. At different epochs he imitated Perugino, Bazzi, Fra Bartolommeo, even Michelangelo; an unequal but imaginative painter, he excels in the treatment of light and shade. Two other artists of this epoch deserve special mention—Andrea Piccinelli, called Del Brescianino, the son of a Brescian, who painted between 1507 and 1525, first following Girolamo del Pacchia, afterwards imitating Fra Bartolommeo; and Bartolommeo Neroni, called Il Riccio, whose work belongs to the middle of the century, the son-in-law and chief pupil of Bazzi. To complete the sketch of Sienese art in the first half of the Cinquecento, we must add a painter who comes slightly earlier than these two: Matteo Balducci, a native of the Perugian contado, who appears originally to have been Pinturicchio’s assistant and pupil, and afterwards to have become a pupil of Bazzi.[68] His work, however, shows no trace of the influence of the latter master, but is purely Umbrian in character.

In Stanza VIII., besides a series of small pictures painted for the Confraternity of Fontegiusta (1, 2, 35, 36), is Bazzi’s famous fresco of Christ at the Column (27), even in its damaged condition unmistakably divine. His Judith (29) is likewise a work of great beauty; but the St Catherine ascribed to him (32) is unworthy alike of the painter and of the subject. The two frescoes (8, 9), representing a Ransom of Prisoners and the Flight of Aeneas from Troy, come from the palace of Pandolfo Petrucci; they were executed by Girolamo Genga, but the composition is probably by Luca Signorelli. Two Madonnas (12 and 30) are ascribed by Mr Berenson to Girolamo del Pacchia. By Matteo Balducci are an Angel (21) and the Madonna and Child, with St Catherine and San Bernardino (34). There is also a Madonna (26) by Girolamo Magagni, called Giomo, a pupil of Bazzi’s, who robbed his master’s studio while the latter lay sick in Florence. Both in this room and the next there is some excellent wood carving by Antonio Barili.

The gems of Stanza IX. are two pictures hung under the name of Pinturicchio—a Nativity (28), which Mr Berenson attributes to Matteo Balducci, and a Madonna and Child holding a pomegranate, with the little St John, against a gold background (29), recognised by the same authority as an early work of Baldassare Peruzzi. We have several Madonnas by Fungai (1, 21, 23, 24, 33); five Saints by Pacchiarotti (5); a whole series of Umbrian pictures—Saints (2, 37), Virtues (10, 11, 15, 19), and a Madonna (17)—attributed to Balducci by Mr Berenson. By Balducci is also the Madonna and Child with St Jerome and St Francis (14). There are dated pictures by Guidoccio Cozzarelli (7) of 1482, and by Andrea di Niccolò (8), an unimportant painter of the end of the Quattrocento. The Trinità, with the two St Johns, St Cosmas and St Damian, is one of Beccafumi’s earliest and best works; it was painted in 1512 for the Spedale, as the presence of the two patrons of the healing art—a kind of mediaeval duplication of Aesculapius—indicates.

The long hall, Stanza X., contains larger pictures of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The arrangement being rather confused, it will, perhaps, be best to take them more or less chronologically. By Matteo di Giovanni are three smaller Madonnas near the entrance—one (12) being rather doubtful—and an important altarpiece of the Madonna and Child with Angels and Saints (36). Guidoccio Cozzarelli is represented by a St Catherine exchanging hearts with the Christ (4), Vecchietta by the interesting sketch (5) for his bronze tabernacle that is now on the high altar of the Duomo, Francesco di Giorgio by a signed Nativity of our Lord (41) and the Coronation of the Blessed Virgin (44)—two large pictures curiously lacking the usual Sienese grace and refinement, showing to some extent the influence of Signorelli. A worthless picture of the Passion (29), which should not even questionably be connected with this painter’s name, shows the Sienese school at its weakest and worst. Benvenuto di Giovanni is seen to considerable advantage in a triptych (39), signed and dated 1475; the central compartment, the Madonna and Child with Angels, is particularly attractive. His Ascension of Christ (37), on the other hand, from the church of Sant’ Eugenio, signed and dated 1491, is rather harsh and uninspired. By Fungai are a Madonna with Saints (30), signed and dated 1512, and an Assumption (45), a subject in which the painter succeeded better elsewhere. It is not easy to distinguish the early style of Pacchiarotti from that of Fungai; the altarpiece (14) is said to be by the master and pupil in collaboration; the Ascension (24), with its predella (23), dry and hard with uncouth and unrefined types, and the Visitation (31), in which the white-robed girlish Madonna has much sweetness and charm, are by Pacchiarotti. Girolamo di Benvenuto is represented by the best picture he ever painted (which, after all, is rather faint praise), signed and dated 1508, representing the Madonna and Child attended by Angels and Saints (17), with the two St Catherines kneeling before the throne—the Alexandrian of the Wheels being obviously an excellent portrait of a young Sienese lady of the Cinquecento.

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

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