The Story of Siena and San Gimignano

by Edmund G. Gardner

“Among the castles it is the very flower, and we are destroying it with all our might. It is the will of God, our Lord, that it should come to nought for our sin; within my heart I feel bitter grief thereat! Each of us has been hunted out, because we have turned to these factions, and we have been slain and burned and taken and robbed. For God’s sake, let us let the past be past, and each one strive to be a good brother, and look upon each other with kindly eyes. And so shall we save this noble jewel, which doth ever move my heart with love, so delightful and beauteous it seemeth to me.”[184]

But all efforts were useless. The Salvucci and the Ardinghelli would have no dealings with each other, “and they kept all the town in gloom.” Each house longed to be avenged on the other and opposed the other at every turn. At length the Ardinghelli, being poorer and weaker than the Salvucci, decided to anticipate their enemies and to urge the people to make a complete and perpetual surrender to the Commune of Florence. In spite of the protests of the Salvucci, this was decided in a general Parliament in July, 1353. The Salvucci had potent friends in Florence, whom they stirred up to get the submission rejected, on the grounds that it was not the will of the people of San Gimignano themselves, but the work of a faction. The Signoria declared that they “only desired the love and the goodwill of all the Commune, and not the lordship of that town in division of the people.” Then two hundred and fifty of the chief men of San Gimignano appeared before the Priors and Gonfaloniere of Florence, assuring them that it was the will of all their people, whose only hope of salvation lay in being accepted by the Florentines. Hearing this, the Signoria formally proposed to the Council of the People of Florence that the surrender should be accepted; but such was still the influence of the Salvucci that it was barely carried. “That which every one should have desired, as a great and honourable acquisition for his native land,” says Matteo Villani, “found so many opposed to it in the secret balloting, that it was only carried by one black bean. I am ashamed to have written it, so infamous was it of my fellow citizens. The motion being carried, the terra of the noble castle of San Gimignano and its contado and district became part of the contado of the Commune of Florence.”[185]

There was a great display of confidence and magnanimity on either side. The Sangimignanesi sent a blank sheet of parchment with their seal to Florence, for the conditions of their submission. The Florentines crossed it and sent it back with two other blank sheets, for the Sangimignanesi to fill up as they pleased. Finally, on August 11th, 1353, the terms were arranged in the Palazzo Vecchio at Florence. They were, remarks Pecori, “most honourable terms, alike for those who dictated and those who received them.” And this is true, so far as everything connected with the taxes and with the local statutes and customs of the place are concerned; and all of the terra and contado, except the “magnates, or those that are considered such by the statutes of the said town,” are to be “in perpetuity, verily and originally, of the contado and of the people, popolani of Florence.” One of the articles stipulates that “all the artisans of San Gimignano, who shall wish to be admitted to the matriculation of any Art in Florence, can be received gratuitously by the respective consuls; it being expressly stated that it is lawful to each one of that town to exercise his own art there freely, notwithstanding the ordinances of the Arts of Florence.” But, in San Gimignano itself, there is to be a Florentine Podestà with full jurisdiction and power, according to the statutes of the terra itself, and further, an unmistakable note of servitude, it is stipulated “that in the Terra of San Gimignano there be constructed a fortress, at the expense of this Commune, in the place that shall be determined by the commissaries of the Signoria of Florence.”[186]

Thus ended the independence of San Gimignano, after a period of a century and a half. As long as the great Republic into whose hands they had fallen lasted, the Sangimignanesi kept up some sort of appearance of communal liberty, and were even allowed to send ambassadors and treat with the other communes of Tuscany on their own account—in small matters of commerce and boundaries. The nine Governors and Defenders of the Town became the eight Priors (reduced to six in 1390) and the Gonfaloniere of Justice, after the Florentine model. When the Podestà entered upon his term of office, he came out in state upon the steps of the Palace, presented the letters of the Signoria of Florence to the assembled people, took the oath and received from the Gonfaloniere the baton of command and the keys of the town. In like fashion the Priors and the Captains of the Parte Guelfa entered upon their terms of office with great pomp, always magnificently attired; the great banner and the seal of the Commune were still solemnly consigned to the crimson-robed Gonfaloniere; and in public ceremonies the magistrates were accompanied by young squires with trumpets, robed in red and yellow, the colours of the Commune, with black caps and green cloaks emblazoned with the arms of San Gimignano in silver. Down to the eighteenth century, San Gimignano was famous for the magnificence of its municipal functions.

Until the end of the fourteenth century, painting in San Gimignano appears to have been exclusively practised by Sienese masters. In the fifteenth century it was exclusively Florentine. At the end of this century, San Gimignano produced two excellent painters of its own, though neither of them in the front rank. Sebastiano Mainardi (died in 1513) became the favourite pupil of Domenico Ghirlandaio, whose sister Alessandra he married; he was a diligent artist, who followed his master with ability, and frequently worked from his designs. Vincenzo di Bernardo Tamagni (1492-1533) worked under Raphael in the Vatican, and imitated his style with considerable success. Vasari praises his soft colouring and the beauty of his figures. His life appears to have been unfortunate. In 1511 Bazzi had him imprisoned for debt in the prison of the Podestà of Montalcino, and in 1527 he was ruined in the sack of Rome, after which, says Vasari, “he lived on, in little happiness.” Bernardo Poccetti (1542-1612), by whom there is much second-rate fresco painting in Florence, was also a native of San Gimignano.