Art in Renaissance Siena

Abstract

While the first half of the 14th century, during the period in which Siena was ruled by the elected officials known as the “Nine” (1287–1355), has tended to be considered the city’s political, economic, and cultural heyday, scholarship over the past decades has reassessed the period following the demographic disaster inflicted by the Black Death (1348). Siena remained an independent city-state through much of the Renaissance period, losing its independence to the Imperial forces of Emperor Charles V (1555), who then ceded it briefly to his son Philip (later Philip II) and who, in turn, sold the city in 1557 to Duke Cosimo de’ Medici to form part of the Medici dominions. Sienese political life throughout the 15th century was marked by complex wrangling between rival factions, although the republican system prevailed—with an intermission during the ascendancy of the quasi-prince Pandolfo Petrucci (c. 1503–1512) and his heirs (to 1525)—until its loss of independence. As a result, a pattern of civic patronage remained at the fore, with major commissions funded by and directed toward the main civic institutions, including the city hall (Palazzo Pubblico), cathedral, and public hospital (Santa Maria della Scala) as well as public infrastructure, such as gates, walls, and water supply. Based, in part, on the continuities of government and its institutions from the 14th century into the Renaissance period, the art of Siena has tended to be characterized in the scholarly literature by elements of tradition and continuity. Until relatively recently, 15th-century painting was viewed quite simplistically as slavishly continuing in the vein of the earlier century, characterized by gold backgrounds and religious iconography derived from local civic devotion and a resistance to stylistic innovation. Nevertheless, a wave of new studies over the past fifteen years has led to a reappraisal of the city’s artistic production. These works have tended to view the distinctive style that characterized Sienese art as consciously defining a local identity through painting, sculpture, and architecture that was unique, and intentionally different, from that of its close neighbor and competitor, Florence. Although there is no comparison between the volume of research conducted on Siena and that on major Renaissance cities such as Rome, Florence, and Venice, Siena has certainly earned the status of a place worthy of consideration among the significant sites of artistic production. This article reveals that English-language research on Sienese art is far from systematic, and it is surprising that many major artists have received only limited attention.

City governance and visual impression management: Visual semiotics and the Biccherna panels of Siena

“…The frescoes were, like the Biccherna panels, commissioned by the city Commune. There was a need to project legitimacy, and for co-ordinated propaganda to inculcate citizens’ faith in the virtues of a political regime of republican self-government that was under threat (Boucheron, 2005; Nevola, 2007a; Skinner, 1986). The Biccherna accounts detail, as civic expenditure, payments to Lorenzetti for the frescoes (Polzer, 2002: 99).…”

“…The provveditori rarely observed the statutory 18-month period before returning to office and were accused of corruption; at times the accounts were not audited (for six consecutive terms in 1343, for example), to the extent that ‘the said offices seemed to be unbridled’ (City Council Act, 24 July 1353, quoted by Bowsky, 1970: 268). To combat these tensions, the Biccherna panels therefore provided a ‘coping mechanism’ (Ezzamel and Reed, 2008: 609) in emphasizing the idealized polity (Nevola, 2007a).…”

“…Literacy was low, even among the ruling classes, 2 and visual media were therefore essential forms of communication. Sienese authorities used visual symbols ‘to offer a façade that was carefully controlled by legislative measures, architectural interventions and artistic commissions that combined to present an ideal vision of the polity’ (Nevola, 2007a: 17). Art was an important means of knowledge acquisition in the realms of medieval moral and political thought (Carruthers, 2013: 17).…”