Ventura; the frescoed Coronation of the Madonna is by Taddeo di Bartolo and Sano di Pietro; the distich in her honour was written later by Niccolò Borghesi. It is thus the same gate through which Enea Piccolomini led the French deliverers in 1552, and that witnessed these French march out in 1555, with the long line of republican exiles, and the triumphant entry of the Marchese di Marignano. A short way beyond the gate is the church of Sta. Maria degli Angioli, a building of the latter part of the Quattrocento; the altar-piece (in a rich frame by Antonio Barili), the Madonna and Child with four Saints, a lunette and predella, is signed and dated 1502, by Raffaello di Carlo, a Florentine painter, by whom there are also works in the Palazzo Corsini and Santo Spirito at Florence. In the sacristy is a standard painted with an Assumption by Riccio.
The other south-eastern gate, the Porta Pispini, has the remains of a frescoed Nativity by Bazzi. According to the legend, the name Pispini is derived from “Il Santo viene,” “the Saint cometh,”—the cry raised by the people when the relics of St Ansanus were brought to the city. Outside the gate, a little to the left, is the modernised remnant of one of the bastions erected by Baldassare Peruzzi, as architect to the Republic.
Santo Spirito, in the Via Pispini, is the chief church of the Dominicans in Siena, and its convent was one of those reformed by Savonarola. It was built about the year 1498; the cupola was designed by Giacomo Cozzarelli and built for Pandolfo Petrucci in 1508, the façade designed in 1519 by Peruzzi for Girolamo Piccolomini, Bishop of Pienza. The first chapel on the left, the Borghesi Chapel, has a glorified Madonna worshipped by St Francis and St Catherine, with child angels, and two beautiful little winged genii standing at the tomb; it is the finest of all Matteo Balducci’s works, thoroughly Umbrian in feeling. On the right is the Cappella degli Spagnuoli, decorated with frescoes (circa 1530), painted in the days of the first Spanish occupation of Siena by Bazzi; the Madonna investing St Alphonso with the episcopal robes, in the presence of two radiantly beautiful virgin martyrs and Angels; St James, represented as a Spanish knight in full armour, superbly mounted, slaying Saracens; St Thomas and St Michael, St Sebastian and St Antony. The single figures are of the utmost beauty. The large terra-cotta group is by Ambrogio della Robbia. The statues of St Vincent Ferrer and St Catherine (the two followers of St Dominic who were found on opposite sides in the schism), in the second chapels, are ascribed to Giacomo Cozzarelli. The Coronation of the Madonna, over the third altar on the left, is by Girolamo del Pacchia. The Crucifixion on the entrance wall is ascribed to Sano di Pietro. There is a Coronation by Beccafumi in the sacristy, and in the cloisters a frescoed Crucifixion painted by Fra Bartolommeo’s pupil, Fra Paolino da Pistoia.
The church of San Giorgio in the Via Ricasoli is, in its present form, a work of the eighteenth century. But it occupies the site of a most ancient church, which was rebuilt in honour of the Battle of Montaperti; its curious campanile, best seen from below the walls, still dates from 1260, and its windows are supposed to represent the different companies of the Sienese who took part in the battle. Near the house of the liberal theological thinkers of the Cinquecento, Lelio and Fausto Sozzini (the founders of the Socinians), which was afterwards a palace of the Malavolti, the Via di Follonica leads to the church of San Giovanni Battista in Pantaneto, which possesses a terra-cotta statue of the Baptist, ascribed to Giacomo Cozzarelli, and several pictures of scenes from his life by Rutilio Manetti. Lower down to the right is one of Siena’s characteristic mediaeval fountains, the Fonte di Follonica, probably constructed in the early years of the thirteenth century. Opposite the Palazzo del Governo, is the Studio, the famous and still flourishing University of Siena. It contains a characteristically Sienese sepulchral monument of the later Trecento, representing the professor, Niccolò Aringhieri, lecturing to his pupils. In the Via Sallustio Bandini is the graceful brick palace that Francesco di Giorgio built for Messer Sallustio, the father of Mario and Francesco, and ancestor of the celebrated man of science. On the left are the remains of one of the castellacce, or private fortresses, of the thirteenth century.
It is a curious turn of fortune that he of whom “all Tuscany sounded” after Montaperti, and of whom “they hardly whispered in Siena” after his fall at Colle,[151] should have given his name to the most conspicuous modern church in his native city. The Madonna of Provenzano was raised to the Blessed Virgin as Protectress of Siena at the end of the sixteenth century. As an inscription to the left of the church bears witness (and there is a most unsavoury novella of Pietro Fortini’s to the same effect), this part of the city was notorious for its evil living, mainly given up to houses of ill-fame, especially in the days of the Spanish occupation. According to the legend, St Catherine had set up a little shrine with an image of the Madonna here, which was rediscovered by Brandano, who declared that here was the greatest treasure of Siena, and that “hither all the most honoured ladies of the nation shall one day come.” In 1594 the image began to work miracles, and the present sanctuary was built in consequence.[152] The pictures that it contains are naturally by later Sienese masters, such as Francesco Vanni and Rustichino. In the sacristy there is what purports to be a portrait of Brandano.
The great church of San Francesco was mainly built in the second quarter of the fourteenth century, from the designs of Agostino di Giovanni and Agnolo di Ventura. It was outside the walls and there was a gate of San Francesco, under the arch of which we still pass to-day. When Pius II. came to Siena, he stayed in the convent and the gate had to be kept open at night for the convenience of his numerous visitors[153]—which induced the Concistoro to decree that it should henceforth be included within the walls. Over the door of the church is a statue of St Francis, by Ramo di Paganello of about 1288. Ruined by fire in the seventeenth century, abandoned to military purposes in the nineteenth and recently restored, the building is but the shadow of its former self. Still, in spite of the modern stained-glass windows from Munich, it remains the most simple and severe, the most typical and austerely Franciscan of all the Italian Gothic churches of Tuscany. The paintings and sculptures that it contains are mere fragments of its original decorations, and for the most part transferred from other parts of the church and convent. The ruined fresco of the Visitation, on the right of the entrance, is ascribed by Mr Berenson to Taddeo di Bartolo. In the second chapel on the right of the choir is the monument of Cristoforo Felici (one of the Operai of the Duomo) of 1462, one of the best works of Urbano da Cortona. In the choir are marble half-length portraits of Silvio Piccolomini and Vittoria Forteguerri, the only remains of the sumptuous monument that their son, Pope Pius II., raised to their memory in 1458. In the first chapel on the left is a frescoed Crucifixion by Pietro Lorenzetti, and in the third chapel are two scenes from the history of the Franciscan order—St Francis before the Pope and the Martyrdom of Franciscan Missionaries—by Ambrogio Lorenzetti. Ruined and repainted, these latter appear to be the remains of a series of frescoes which Ghiberti saw and admired in the cloisters here. The chapel opposite was formerly that of the nephews of Pius II., the Todeschini Piccolomini and Piccolomini d’Aragona; it was restored and modernised by a noble lady of the Saracini a few years ago. The Cardinal Virtues on the pavement were originally executed by Lorenzo di Mariano. In the cloisters, outside the Seminary chapel, there is a Madonna Lattante, entitled Sedes Sapientiae, by Giacomo Cozzarelli. The chapel itself contains a most beautiful Madonna and Child by Ambrogio Lorenzetti, and a large fresco, of uncertain authorship, of the same epoch. The Seminary further possesses several good early Sienese paintings.
Under the shadow of San Francesco rises the little oratory of his great Sienese follower, San Bernardino. On the ground floor is a Madonna and Child with St Ansanus and St Bartholomew, a beautiful early work of Andrea del Brescianino. On the upper floor, in an antechapel, are a Madonna by Sano di Pietro and a marble bas-relief, the Madonna with Angels, signed by Agostino di Giovanni. The oratory itself is the “Siena’s Art-laboratory” of Robert Browning’s Pacchiarotto poem. Its walls are covered by a series of frescoes by Bazzi, Girolamo del Pacchia and Beccafumi, painted between 1518 and 1532, among the finest achievements of these three masters, under a richly decorated roof of the end of the Quattrocento by Giuliano Turapilli. On the left wall are: St Louis of Anjou by Bazzi; the Nativity of the Madonna, by Pacchia, showing Florentine influence; the Presentation in the Temple, by Bazzi; the Sposalizio by Beccafumi; San Bernardino by Pacchia. On the altar wall, between the Archangel and the Virgin of the Annunciation by Pacchia, is a grandiose fresco by Beccafumi (painted in 1537, nearly twenty years later than his other works here), representing the Madonna and Child enthroned with Apostles, Franciscans, and Angels. On the right wall are: St Antony of Padua, now ascribed to Pacchia; the Visitation by Bazzi; the Death of the Blessed Virgin, with Angels and Apostles clustering round, Christ rushing down from Heaven to receive her soul, by Beccafumi; the Assumption and St Francis by Bazzi. Between the windows is the Coronation of Mary in Heaven by the Blessed Trinity, with the Baptist and Adam as assessors, also by Bazzi.
The little church of San Pietro Ovile contains two good early Sienese paintings. On the right is the Annunciation with, above, the Crucifixion between St Peter and St Paul; the central scene is a copy, with variations and some change of sentiment, from the well-known picture by Simone Martini and Lippo Memmi in the Uffizi. Opposite to it is a Madonna and Child by Pietro Lorenzetti, between San Bernardino and the Baptist by Matteo di Giovanni.
“Before you, magnificent and potent Lords, Lords Priors, Governors of the Commune, and Captain of the People of Siena,”—thus begins a petition of February 25th, 1465 (i.e. 1466)—“the least of your children and servants, the Officers over the Adornment of your City, with due reverence set forth that they are continually thinking how to do what may be to the adorning of the city, especially on the Strada Romana where pass the strangers who give praise to all the city.”[154] This