The Story of Siena and San Gimignano

by Edmund G. Gardner

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.