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]