Not merely Francesco di Giorgio tries to do in a decade the work of a century, but such younger contemporaries as Fungai and Pacchiarotti look to Florence or Umbria. Siena was given no time to reconstruct, and her old beautiful art could not readily assume new forms. Siena never assimilated the Renaissance. It invaded her, killed her native art and substituted one without local flavor. Before Francesco di Giorgio died, in 1502, he had seen Luca Signorelli called to Siena and the clever decorator Pintorricchio. Siena no longer trusted her own artists. Francesco probably took little note of the advent in 1501, of a young Piedmontese painter, Antonio Bazzi,[[27]] nicknamed Sodoma, yet with Sodoma remained what little future there was in Sienese painting.
Fig. 69. Sodoma. Vision of St. Catherine of Siena. Fresco.—S. Domenico, Siena.
Sodoma brought to Siena the knowledge of Leonardo da Vinci, the new draughtsmanship in light and shade. He assimilated the sensibility of Siena but coarsened it. No painter of the time was more overtly sentimental. His famous St. Sebastian at Florence tells all that need be known about him,—his considerable skill, his exaggerated pathos, his clever use of poise and balance, his sober modern tonalities. His sentimental power is at its height in the fresco at S. Domenico, Siena, which represents S. Catherine swooning at the vision of her lover, the Christ, Figure [69]. Sodoma worked indefatigably in and about Siena till 1549. The few local painters of a progressive sort, Domenico Beccafumi, Girolamo del Pacchia, either directly imitate Sodoma or draw from similar alien sources. The only man of genius Siena produced in these years, Baldassare Peruzzi (1481–1536), soon went to Rome where in architecture he held his own with all comers, whereas in painting he became a modest imitator of Raphael.
In the ten years after 1500 the old art perished. Siena from being the last radiant exemplar of the glory of the mediæval spirit sunk to the estate of a fourth class station of the Renaissance. Her idealism could not bear the test of reality. Her domain had been that of legend and fairy tale and dream, she had ruled it exquisitely for two centuries until sheer taste had absorbed her little strength. She had left unforgettable records of her most precious feelings, but little record of her outer activities. Think how portraits abound in Florentine and Venetian art after 1450! There are practically none at Siena. So it would be futile to go to Siena for a greater understanding of the active life. But if you would requicken the sense of legend, live over again the tenderness mankind has ever felt for the beautiful past, hear some faint blowing of the horns of elfland—if you want this experience, then go to The gracious City of the Virgin and you shall find fulfilled the generous motto over her main portal—Siena will open her heart wide to thee.
Fig. 68. Francesco di Giorgio. Nativity.—Belle Arti.
ILLUSTRATIONS FOR CHAPTER II
A Sonnet to the Spendthrift Club
by