In the evening when the sun is setting,
Siena's brick patrician town houses glow in warm tones of
brown and ochre: at the heart of the city is the Campo, a shell-shaped,
cobble-stoned square that slopes downward, where the shadow of the Torre
del Mangia grows longer. After the sun has disappeared, young people, who
gather in the square "to see and to be seen", continue to radiate the heat
of the day. Time seems to have stood still in Siena. The Gothic cityscape
has essentially survived intact with its striking silhouette of the
cathedral, steep alleys and imposing city wall.
Today, major roads do not lead to Siena. However, during
the late Middle Ages this was not the case: merchants, pilgrims, knights
and emperors had to pass through the city on their way to and from Rome.
This Frankish road, built by the Lombards, brought additional prosperity
to the city, whose affluence was assured by the nearby silver mines. The
Sienese banking houses were among the most powerful in Europe and the
Sienese sought to express their prosperity through grand building
projects. As evidence of their mercantile confidence and assertiveness,
between 1288 and 1309, they built their town hall, the Palazzo Pubblico,
in travertine and brick. To adorn the interior of the Palazzo, elaborate
fresco cycles were commissioned, among them Allegory of Good
Government and Allegory of Bad Government,
painted by a native of Siena, the artist
Ambrogio Lorenzetti.
Masterpieces of medieval painting, these enormous works fill the room used
by the governing Council of the city-state from 1292 until 1355. Panoramic
in style and unusually profuse in detail for that time period, they are
probably the first realistic townscapes in Western painting.
Promoting the consequences of good politics,
Allegory of Good Government proclaims peacekeeping as the loftiest
aim of a just governance. Peace is the only guarantor that trade and
commerce will flourish and that life will bring serenity and joy. Although
these are allegorical scenes,
Lorenzetti
chose to paint the people of his day, engaged in everyday activities.
Dwellings, shops and palaces with towers and crenellations give us a
realistic picture of how Siena must have looked in the first half of the
fourteenth century. Allegory of Bad Government, located on
the opposite wall, depicts the same townscape scene, only devastated by
war. Bernardino of Siena described it thus in a sermon: "Here I see no
commerce, no dances. I see only death. No houses are being built, fields
are no longer being cultivated and grapes are no longer being harvested."
Only a few years after
Lorenzetti
had finished the frescoes, this bleak picture of Siena essentially became
reality, although not by human contrivance. Siena lost more than
two-thirds of her townspeople to the plague and among the victims was the
painter himself,
Ambrogio Lorenzetti.
