The present convent and church were rebuilt by
Pandolfo Petrucci, but were considerably altered and enlarged in the latter part of the seventeenth century. The church is said to have been designed by Giacomo Cozzarelli, shortly before that master reared for Pandolfo his own sumptuous palace near the Duomo, and to have been actually built by four friars of the Order—Filippo and Leone of Florence, Leonardo da Potenza, and Leone da San Gimignano.[159] It is full of terra-cotta work and early Sienese pictures. In the first chapel on the left is a perfect little gem by Sano di Pietro; the Madonna and Child enthroned, with Angels clad in the green and red of hope and love, winged with the white of faith. In the next chapel is the Coronation of the Madonna, perhaps the most divinely beautiful of all the works of Andrea della Robbia, with the Annunciation, Nativity and Assumption in the predella; the motive of St Francis, with his hand upon the head of the kneeling St Clare, is especially happy. This is surely the kind of sculpture in which Dante saw the examples of humility on the wall of the first terrace of Purgatory. The altar-piece of the third chapel is also by Sano di Pietro, representing the Madonna and Child between Bernardino and St Jerome; while in the fourth is a picture of Saints by Taddeo di Bartolo, with a predella by Sano. In the chapels opposite are a Madonna and Child, with St Ambrose and St Jerome, the Annunciation above, a meritorious work by Stefano di Giovanni, and the Crucifixion, the masterpiece of Bazzi’s son-in-law, Il Riccio, but badly restored. The terra-cottas on the vaults are ascribed to Francesco di Giorgio. In the choir are statues of Mary and Gabriel of the Annunciation, of the school of the Della Robbia; and a contemporary portrait of San Bernardino, said to have been painted in 1439 by Pietro di Giovanni Pucci. Certain of his relics are preserved beneath the high altar in a silver reliquary of 1472, the work of Francesco di Antonio.
Pandolfo Petrucci is buried in the sacristy, which contains a Pietà questionably ascribed to Giacomo Cozzarelli. Among the numerous sepulchres in the crypt is that of Celia Petrucci, a fashionable beauty of the sixteenth century. Under the church is a little chapel formed of the original cell of San Bernardino—transported bodily from the older convent—with the same wooden door wherewith he shut himself out, for brief intervals, from the turbulent world for which he laboured. Thus are the memories and relics of Siena’s great apostle of peace curiously linked with those of her first tyrant.
Somewhat more than a mile beyond the Porta San Marco is the Abbey of Sant’ Eugenio, usually known simply as Il Monastero. This is the castle-like building that is so conspicuous in the foreground to the south, in the view from the ramparts of Santa Barbara. It is reached from the gate through pleasant lanes, lined with vineyards and olive plantations, that in spring and summer swarm with that noblest of European butterflies, the tiger-striped Papilio Podalirius. It was originally a monastery of the Benedictines of Monte Cassino and was founded in the eighth century; Piero Strozzi fortified it in 1554, but it was soon occupied by the imperial forces. At present it is the property of a Sienese family, the Griccioli, and has been completely modernised. From one of the former cloisters there is a fine view of the mountains to the south. The best of the pictures have gone from the church, and those that remain have been repainted. There is a much damaged Bearing of the Cross, belonging to the series of frescoes that Bazzi painted for the Compagnia di Santa Croce. Two frescoes by Benvenuto di Giovanni—the Resurrection and the Crucifixion—are among that painter’s better works. In the chapel to the right of the choir is a Madonna and Child with two Angels by Francesco di Giorgio, and, in the chapel to the left, a Madonna and Child, an authentic work by Ambrogio Lorenzetti. The famous Assumption of the Madonna—somewhat too enthusiastically praised in England—by Matteo di Giovanni, which once adorned the high altar, is now in the National Gallery of London, and a Madonna by Duccio, which was formerly in the sacristy, appears recently to have followed it beyond the Alps—unless it has made a longer voyage and, like other Italian pictures, crossed the Atlantic.
“Superficially,” writes John Addington Symonds, “much of the present charm of Siena consists in the soft opening valleys, the glimpses of long blue hills and fertile country-side, framed by irregular brown houses stretching along the slopes on which the town is built, and losing themselves abruptly in olive fields and orchards. This element of beauty, which brings the city into immediate relation with the country, is indeed not peculiar to Siena. We find it in Perugia, in Assisi, in Montepulciano, in nearly all the hill towns of Umbria and Tuscany. But their landscape is often tragic and austere, while this is always suave. City and country blend here in delightful amity. Neither yields that sense of aloofness which stirs melancholy.”[160]
We leave Siena by the Porta Fontebranda, along the way by which the returning Noveschi crept up to the city walls on that fateful night between July 21st and 22nd, 1487, turning back at intervals for the varied glimpses of San Domenico with its huge red bulk and tower, or the gleaming marbles of the Duomo. At the antimony works, where the road divides, we take the way to the right, westwards. Presently we mount up again, through lanes on either side that might almost be English—only, when these break away, the silvery olives, the convents on the hills, Siena’s towers and the distant mountains remind us that we are in Tuscany. “The most charming district in the immediate neighbourhood of Siena,” to quote Symonds once more, “lies westward, near Belcaro, a villa high up on a hill. It is a region of deep lanes and golden-green oak woods, with cypresses and stone-pines, and little streams in all directions flowing over the brown sandstone. The country is like some parts of rural England—Devonshire or Sussex. Not only is the sandstone here, as there, broken into deep gullies; but the vegetation is much the same. Tufted spleenwort, primroses, and broom tangle the hedges under boughs of hornbeam and sweet-chestnut.” The view of Siena behind us gradually expands, as we mount up. When the little chapel is passed, we keep to the right; presently an avenue of oaks and ilex-trees leads to the villa, or castello, of Belcaro.