The pictorial decorations of the Sala di Balìa were commissioned by the Signoria in 1407, and begun in the following year. The Virtues on the ceiling are by Martino di Bartolommeo Sensi, a Sienese painter who belonged to the order of the Riformatori and whose chief works are in the neighbourhood of Pisa. The scenes on the walls are by Spinello Aretino, the Aretine who ranks as the last of the Giotteschi and who was then nearly eighty years old, and his son Parri. They represent the life of the great Sienese Pope, Alexander III., but are not arranged in chronological order and the subjects are frequently doubtful. Among them we may notice the Pope giving a blessed sword to the Doge of Venice, Sebastiano Ziani, on the wall opposite the first window; on the entrance wall, the capture of an Italian town by the imperialists and the naval victory of the Venetians on Ascension Day, 1176, in which the Caesar’s son Otto was taken prisoner. The latter scene is a splendid rendering of mediaeval naval warfare—note especially, on the right, the episode of the capture of the prince and the frenzied efforts of the imperialists to rescue him. The second fresco on the arch probably represents the recognition of the Pope, when disguised as a monk at Venice, by a French pilgrim. On the wall opposite the second window is the building of Alessandria with its elevation into a Bishopric, and, apparently, the humiliation of the Emperor Barbarossa. There is a curious representation of the burning of a heretic on the arch. Opposite the entrance is the presentation of the captured prince to the Pope, and the latter’s triumphal procession with the Emperor and the Doge leading his horse. Beyond is the Sala Monumentale, painted in honour of Vittorio Emanuele II. by modern Sienese artists with certain great scenes in the story of the unification of Italy—the armistice after Novara, the battles of San Martino and Palestro, the meeting of Vittorio Emanuele and Garibaldi, the Roman Plebiscite and the funeral of the King. With the impartiality that, in some respects, is characteristic of modern Italy, Alexander III. is represented in one of the medallions among the precursors of the political regeneration of his country.
In this Sala di Balìa—then called the Sala del Papa—there was a notable tragedy enacted in 1455, in the very year that the “Magistracy of the Fifteen of the Balìa” was first instituted—originally of fifteen citizens to superintend the prosecution of the war against Piccinino. The commander of the Sienese forces, Count Giberto da Correggio, was in secret treaty with the enemy, sent him supplies while Siena starved, and attempted to occupy Grosseto on his own account. The government was warned by the officers of the Duke of Milan that their general was going to betray them, but the Balìa had already ample proofs in its hands; not daring to arrest him in the midst of his troops, they waited their time. “What human cunning could devise no means to do,” writes Malavolti, somewhat sanctimoniously, “was easily ordained by the Divine Justice, that seldom suffers such enormous crimes to remain unpunished.” They heard that, on September 6th, the Count would come to the city, to demand payment of a large sum of money which he claimed from the government. The morning that he was expected, the Fifteen met, reviewed the evidence against him, and decided upon their measures. The Count confidently entered the city with thirty horsemen, rode to the Palazzo de’ Marescotti (the present Palazzo Saracini), where he had apartments, and demanded an audience of the Balìa. In the evening four nobles of the city, with a number of citizens and the trumpeters of the Signoria, came to bring him in state to the Palace for the audience that he had demanded. The Count and his chancellor went up into the chapel, while the doors of the Palace were closed and his other attendants detained in the Sala delle Balestre. When all was ready, the Count was called before the Fifteen in the Sala di Balìa—the Priors being meanwhile assembled in the Sala di Concistoro. Perhaps he passed through that little door upon which even then was the design of Fortune’s wheel. With all marks of honour and respect, he was invited to seat himself with the Fifteen, by the side of the Prior of the Balìa, and questioned about what had gone on in the field. He answered insolently and proudly—upon which he was accused to his face of treason, and the intercepted letters shown him that he had interchanged with Piccinino. He sprang to his feet: “What! do you imagine that I am a prisoner in your hands?” “Quite otherwise,” answered Lodovico Petroni, one of the Fifteen, seizing hold of his cloak. At the signal armed men rushed in—they had been lying in wait in the room beyond—and stabbed him to death. The still quivering body was dragged to the window and hurled out on to the pavement below. Later on, it was carried to the Duomo and buried
near the Campanile, without any honour or name to mark the spot. That same night the Balìa notified to the Pope and their other allies what had been done. To his Holiness they declared that “this astute seminator of evil, this your insidious foe, this traitor to our Republic” had been done to death by the people in a tumult; to the Duke of Milan they sent a piece of his cloak, drenched in blood; to Venice and to Florence they told the truth, pleading the sacred duty of saving the State, citing as precedents the deaths of Carmagnola and Baldaccio d’Anghiari. Pope Calixtus insisted that they should justify themselves by publishing the evidence, and when this was done, on September 18th, he absolved the Fifteen, each severally by name. But to the appeal of the Sienese envoys for a general absolution for all the people of the city, he replied that he could not grant it, “because you Sienese would be too strong in Paradise.”[75]
Two antique coffers in this room—one of them with the Lupa carved by Antonio Barili—are also worthy of notice. In the Loggia on the second floor of the Palace is a frescoed Madonna and Child by Ambrogio Lorenzetti.
The second door to the left of the wolf in the Piazza leads, through a picturesque little court covered with old frescoes, to a series of rooms on the ground floor, at present used by the municipality. In the Sala dei Signori di Biccherna, the room in which the Camarlingo and Quattro Provveditori met, is the Coronation of the Blessed Virgin, a fresco painted in 1445 by Sano di Pietro. Two of the Angels are holding a scroll with a poem, thus blending painting and poetry together in the characteristic early Sienese way: “This blessed glorious Virgin pure, Daughter of her Son and Spouse and Mother—because the Eternal Father found her more humble than any other person, He giveth her here the crown of the Universe. Virgin Mother of the Eternal God, by whose holy hands thou art crowned, to thee be recommended the devout and faithful city of Siena, as it hopeth in thee; hail, full of grace.” The San Bernardino on the right is also by Sano. In the same room there is a small fresco by Bazzi—the Madonna and Child with the little St John, St Michael Archangel and St Galganus. Like all his work in the Palace it is late, about 1537, but, unlike the rest, it is badly drawn and carelessly executed.
In the Stanza del Sindaco there is a much finer fresco of Bazzi’s—the Resurrection of Christ, with the three Maries approaching through the early spring landscape. It was originally painted, probably in 1535, in the place where the salt was sold, and was sawn out in the last century. Vasari specially praises the beauty of the Angels’ heads. In another room is a frescoed Madonna by Vecchietta. On the ground floor is also the entrance to what during the fifteenth century was the Sala del Gran Consiglio, but which in the latter part of the sixteenth century, after the final fall of the Republic, was converted into a theatre.