The Story of Siena and San Gimignano

by Edmund G. Gardner

all respects the same, undoubtedly stands upon the site of the one from which Cerreto Ceccolini announced the varying fortunes of the battle of Montaperti. In the courtyard is a statue of Pope Julius III. (1550-1555), Giovanni Maria del Monte, whose mother belonged to the house of the Saracini. The palace contains a large collection of pictures in a long series of rooms. A few only are of importance. Here are several pictures by Beccafumi, conspicuous among which is a large altarpiece, curiously imitating the style of Fra Bartolommeo’s stately creations in this kind and representing the Sposalizio of St Catherine of Siena, in the presence of St Peter and St Paul and other Saints. It was originally in Santo Spirito. “This work,” says Vasari, “which was executed with much judgment and design, gained for him great honour.” Here is also what is said to be the first sketch of Beccafumi’s Nativity in San Martino. There are two characteristic Madonnas by Neroccio di Bartolommeo Landi. Andrea del Brescianino is represented by a Holy Family, two exceedingly beautiful tondi very much above his usual level, and a small painted shrine. An attractive Florentine portrait of a golden-haired girl in a red dress, with the attributes of St Catherine of Alexandria, shown as a Botticelli, is ascribed by Mr Berenson to Sebastiano Mainardi, the painter of San Gimignano. The earlier works by Giovanni di Paolo, Sassetta and others, are mostly unimportant. There is an excellent modern picture by Amos Cassioli representing the visit of Galeazzo Maria Sforza to Lorenzo de’ Medici in 1471. In one of the rooms of the palace there is a small Madonna, much repainted, by Sano di Pietro.

On the right is the Palazzo Piccolomini “delle Papesse,” adorned with the arms of the Piccolomini and now occupied by the Banca d’Italia, begun in 1460 by the sister of Pope Pius II., Caterina Piccolomini, who in the October of that year petitioned the Signoria for exemption from the Gabella for the various stones and marbles required, on the grounds that “the said Madonna Caterina intends and wishes to make the said house in the most noble fashion and with great cost, to the honour of this magnificent city and of your Magnificences and lofty Lordships.”[133] In style it shows a peculiar harmonising of the Sienese Gothic with the domestic architecture of the Florentine Quattrocento. The façade is an effective combination of a rusticated basement with smooth grey stone above. The original designer was probably Bernardino Rossellino, the Florentine master whom Pius was employing at Pienza, the actual architects Antonio Federighi and Urbano da Cortona. The work was interrupted in 1472, owing to Madonna Caterina’s lack of means, and finished in 1595 by the Archbishop Ascanio Piccolomini. In the days of this latter genial prelate the palace was a great centre for social gatherings, “to hearken to gracious discussions, judicious discourses, and also disputations touching every noble matter.”[134]

Beyond the Palazzo delle Papesse is the Palazzo Marsili, a Gothic edifice in red brick—one of the oldest in Siena, but practically rebuilt by Luca di Bartolo in the middle of the fifteenth century. Between these two, the Via del Castoro leads up through the abandoned façade into the Piazza del Duomo. In the days when it was proposed to build the new Cathedral, the Palazzo delle Papesse naturally did not exist, and in its place there would have been a piazza with the chief approach to the Duomo. At the end of the Via di Città is the grey tower, half stone and half brick, of the Forteguerri de’ Grandi, one of the oldest noble families of Siena, which was originally connected by a bridge with the palace opposite, which was also of the Forteguerri (later one of the numerous palaces of the Piccolomini). It was here that Niccolò Borghesi was murdered in June, 1500. He was returning from Mass at the Duomo with several armed servants—for he had been warned that Pandolfo was meditating violence—and passing down the Via del Capitano, when Pandolfo’s emissaries set upon him, killed his servants on the spot, and left him with just enough life to crawl to the foot of the tower, where he was taken into the house of Giovanni Borghesi, to die with that harmonious blending of the devout Christian and the Stoic philosopher that had characterised him throughout.

The Via di Città ends in the Piazza di Postierla, whence the Via del Capitano, Via Stalloreggi, and Via di San Pietro diverge. There is a “Lupa” of the Quattrocento in the square, with a banner-holder in the fine metal-work of the same epoch. In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries the Postierla was a favourite resort of the Sienese nobility, one of the most fashionable places in the city. During the siege, the four ladies of Scipione Bargagli’s Trattenimenti—Clarice, Celia, Olinda and Clizia—met in Clarice’s house, which was one of those with windows that looked out upon the Postierla. They were “all certainly as young and pleasing, as they were clever and honest”; and, it being the Sunday of the Carnival, they resolved, in spite of the cruel enemies of the Republic, to keep the three days of the Carnival, as Clarice suggested, “with some form of pleasant and gentle conversation, according to what will be most agreeable to us all.” But men were needed to make the plan a success. “Indeed,” said Celia, “our delight, however great, would not have its savour unless the presence, at once grave and sweet, of a man brought its condiment to it.” And at that moment there appeared five young men of the city, coming up the street, of course as wise and admirable as they were rich and noble. “In these ardent youths, neither hardships nor loss of means, nor of parents or friends, nor the danger that hung over themselves, had ever been able to cool, much less quench, that quick amorous fire wherewith they, without any fuel, bore their breasts inflamed.” At this sudden apparition the ladies gave devout thanks to Heaven in their hearts, and the bella ragunanza was complete.

On the right of the Postierla is the handsome palace built by the Chigi in the latter part of the Cinquecento. In the Via del Capitano, on the left, is the palace where the Capitano della Guerra or Senatore resided, during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.[135] Under its battlements runs a series of coats of arms of these captains or senators, among which the student of Dante will recognise the Lion of the Ordelaffi and the Column of the Colonna. The palace has been completely restored. The cortile, with a staircase guarded by the Lion of the People, somewhat resembles—on a smaller scale—the Palazzo del Podestà at Florence. The palace (which now belongs to the Count Piccolomini della Triana, as the arms on the shield which the Lion holds indicate) was sold by the Republic in the fifteenth century to Tommaso Pecci, one of the leaders of the Noveschi. In his days it was a centre of gay courtly life, and when distinguished visitors, especially those of the gentle sex, passed through Siena, they were usually entertained by the Republic in this palace. That noblest of ladies of the Renaissance, Eleonora of Aragon (the sister of Duke Alfonso of Calabria), on her way to Ferrara to become the wife of