_The Sculptors and Painters of Siena_
We may conveniently begin the story of Sienese art with the coming of
Niccolò Pisano to Siena in 1266, the year after Dante's birth, for the
work of the great marble pulpit of the Duomo. Niccolò's son, Giovanni,
became a citizen of Siena, and was chief architect of the Duomo during
the two closing decades of the century. Stimulated by their presence and
example, there rose an independent school of Sienese sculptors, which
flourished from the end of the thirteenth to the middle of the
fourteenth century--a school which chronologically succeeds to that
founded by Niccolò Pisano, and anticipates the rise of the Florentine
school under Andrea Pisano's influence. These Sienese sculptors were
mainly employed upon the Cathedrals of Siena and of Orvieto, and in
making tombs in other cities of Italy, sepulchral monuments in which,
writes M. Reymond, "the Sienese school reveals a very special and new
character, which is the subordination of the religious idea to the civil
idea."[60] Tino da Camaino, who sculptured the famous tomb of Henry VII.
at Pisa and worked for the royal Angevins of Naples; the architects,
Agostino di Giovanni and Agnolo di Ventura; Cellino di Nese, who made
the tomb of the poet Cino at Pistoia; Gano da Siena and Ramo di
Paganello; Lorenzo Maitani, whose fame is for ever linked to the
glorious Duomo of Orvieto; these are the masters of chief repute in
this early Sienese school.
All these belong to that bright epoch in the story of Siena previous to
the great pestilence of 1348. Then there came a sad decline, as the
statues of the Apostles in the chapel of the Campo, executed between
1376 and 1384, show only too clearly. But, just at the time that St
Catherine was beginning her public life, Siena became the mother of one
of the greatest sculptors of the Renaissance.
Giacomo della Quercia was the son of a goldsmith named Pietro di Agnolo,
a citizen of Siena, and was born in Siena or its contado in 1371 or
1374. His first artistic studies were made in Siena itself where, there
being then no great native sculptors, he drank inspiration almost solely
from the great pulpit of the Duomo. This, perhaps, is what makes him so
isolated a figure in the art of the Quattrocento; the heir of Niccolò
Pisano, the forerunner of Michelangelo. He left Siena when it fell into
the hands of the Duke of Milan, and went to Florence, where he was
chiefly impressed by the work of Giotto and Andrea Pisano. In 1401 he
entered the competition for the second bronze gates of the Baptistery,
and came next to Ghiberti and Brunelleschi; his figures, says Vasari,
were considered good, but lacking in refinement, _non avevano finezze_.
A few years later, at Lucca, he carved that tomb of Ilaria del Carretto,
made famous in our own days by the eloquent enthusiasm of Ruskin. His
native city now began to recognise his genius. In 1409 he was
commissioned to make the famous fountain of the Piazza del Campo, upon
which he worked at intervals between 1412 and 1419--going off to do
other work at Lucca, and forced by the Signoria to return under heavy
financial penalties. In 1416 he was commissioned by the Operaio, or
superintendent of the artistic work of the Duomo, to design the Font for
the Baptistery,
[Illustration: _The Pulpit of the Duomo, Siena._
(_Niccolò Pisano and his pupils._)]
and in the following year to cast two bronze scenes, _storie_, for the
same. But here again he undertook things elsewhere--in Bologna, this
time--and the Signoria had to compel him to finish what he had begun,
which he did in 1434. In the meanwhile, he had accomplished his supreme
work at Bologna in the bas-reliefs on the pilasters of the door of San
Petronio--those marvellous scenes from the Book of Genesis, in which he
seems to anticipate the achievement of Michelangelo in the Cappella
Sistina. Giacomo died at Siena in 1438. His style is grand and austere,
full of force and vigour, with a kind of rugged greatness that contrasts
curiously with the manner of contemporary Sienese painters; he dispenses
with accessories, concentrating the interest upon the human figures in
his stories. There is peculiar nobility and power in his treatment of
the nude. "Sooth to say, Giacomo had only one pupil, and for him there
was a century to wait; he was Michelangelo."[61]
No other Sienese sculptor of the Quattrocento approaches Giacomo's
solitary greatness. Pietro del Minella (1391-1458) was his favourite
pupil and assistant, but caught little of his spirit. The two
Turini--Turino di Sano and his son Giovanni (1384-1455)--were associated
with him on the work for the Baptistery, and acquitted themselves
creditably, even by the side of Donatello and Ghiberti. Then come two
men of greater mark: Antonio Federighi (died about 1480), and Lorenzo di
Pietro (1412-1480), called Il Vecchietta. The former, who is said to
have been connected with the Tolomei, was also an architect, as the
"grandiose simplicity" of the Loggia that he built for Pius II. shows;
as a sculptor, he is perhaps the most classical of the Sienese masters
of the Quattrocento, following not unworthily in the steps of both
Giacomo della Quercia and Donatello. Vecchietta appears to have been
actually Giacomo's pupil; his principal works are in bronze, somewhat
hard and dry in style, with excessive attention to anatomical details.
Giovanni di Stefano (died after 1498) and Urbano da Cortona (died 1504),
by the latter of whom are some tolerable works in the Duomo and
elsewhere, are conscientious _scarpellini_, with no original genius. To
Francesco di Giorgio Martini (1439-1502), the pupil of Vecchietta, are
ascribed--frequently on no adequate grounds--a number of the chief
buildings in Siena in the style of the earlier Renaissance; as a
military architect, he stands high among the craftsmen of his century,
and was much employed by the Dukes of Urbino. Like his master
Vecchietta, he was also a worker in bronze and a painter. Of his
fellow-pupil Neroccio di Bartolommeo Landi (1447-1500), it will be best
to speak among the painters; his few extant works in sculpture have a
peculiar combination of dignity and sweetness, which is at once
impressive and winning. Giacomo Cozzarelli (1453-1515) was a pupil of
Francesco di Giorgio; he designed the famous palace of Pandolfo Petrucci
and made those wonderful torch-holders and other metal work for its
exterior, which are only surpassed by Caparra's masterpieces in this
kind on the palace of Filippo Strozzi at Florence. Lorenzo di Mariano,
called Il Marrina (died in 1534), is the last great sculptor of the
Sienese Renaissance; as a decorator in marble he has few if any equals,
and his masterpiece in the oratory of Fontegiusta need not fear the
comparison with the best Florentine work of the epoch.
Nor should we pass from the sculptors without a word on the
wood-carvers, who are among the minor artistic glories of Siena.
Domenico di Niccolò (who died about 1450), called Del Coro from his work
in the chapel of the Palazzo del Comune, Antonio Barili (died 1516), and
Giovanni Barili (died 1529), produced work in this kind which is hardly
surpassed in any Italian city of the Renaissance.
The Jesuit art-historian Lanzi characterised the Sienese school of
painters as _lieta scuola fra lieto popolo_, "a blithe school among a
blithe people," and added that their principal works were to be found in
the churches of the city. Needless to say that the latter remark no
longer holds, and we shall do best to begin our consideration of the
painters in the well-arranged picture gallery of the _Reale Istituto
Provinciale di Belle Arti_.
The first great epoch in Sienese painting, as in sculpture, is
contemporaneous with the government of the Nine and ends with the
outbreak of the pestilence of 1348. The moving spirit of this period,
the true founder of the Sienese school, is Duccio di Buoninsegna. Recent
researches have shown that he was born shortly before the battle of
Montaperti, and that his artistic activity extends from 1278 to
1313.[62] It will be better to speak more fully of his work when we
stand before his masterpiece in the Opera del Duomo, that picture which,
in Ghiberti's words, "was made right excellently and learnedly, and is a
magnificent thing." Bringing the Byzantine manner to its utmost
perfection for the purpose of religious illustration, Duccio gave
imperishable form to what had been more or less traditional through the
previous centuries of Christian art. He is to the Middle Ages what
Raphael was to be to the Renaissance. Segna di Tura di Buoninsegna, who
was working in the early years of the fourteenth century, was Duccio's
pupil, perhaps his nephew; he imitated the manner of his master, but
somewhat ineffectually. Simone Martini, on the other hand, followed
worthily in Duccio's footsteps; with an exquisite sense of beauty and a
love of splendid decorative effects in colour, he is perhaps the most
typical master of "soft Siena," doing for her in line and colour what
Folgore had done in rhyme. He died in 1344. With him as assistant worked
his brother-in-law, Lippo Memmi; "they were gentle masters," wrote
Ghiberti, "and their pictures were done with the greatest diligence,
right delicately finished." This epoch culminates in the two
Lorenzetti--Pietro and his younger brother Ambrogio--both of whom appear
to have been among the victims of the pestilence. Ambrogio especially,
_famosissimo e singularissimo maestro_, as Ghiberti calls him,
_nobilissimo componitore_, is the greatest and most imaginative painter
that Siena has produced. In the splendid allegorical frescoes with which
he adorned the palace chamber of the _Signori Nove_ and in his glowing
altarpieces, in material beauty and spiritual significance, he reaches a
height unattained by any other Italian painter of his century--save only
the mighty Florentine, Andrea Orcagna.
In the Stanza Prima--_dei Primitivi_--we have first a number of pictures
of the Pre-Duccian epoch. The altarpiece (1), partly in stucco in half
relief and in the Byzantine style, is peculiarly interesting from its
date, 1215, as showing us the state of art in Tuscany in the very year
of the traditional outbreak of the Guelf and Ghibelline factions in
Florence. The very curious paintings (4 and 5), belonging to the
thirteenth century, may be taken as next-to-contemporary representations
of the scenes from the lives of St Francis and St Clare and Blessed
Andrea Gallerani which they include (besides St Bartholomew, St
Catherine of Alexandria, and St Dominic); St Clare repulsing Manfred's
Saracens
[Illustration:
_Alinari, Florence_
THE FONT OF SAN GIOVANNI DI SIENA]
from her convent by the Sacred Host is unique in so early a picture. We
may here mention that Andrea Gallerani, a frequently recurring figure in
Sienese art, was a nobleman of Siena, who died in 1251. He had killed a
man for blaspheming and was exiled, but afterwards returned and devoted
himself to works of mercy and charity, founding the Spedale della
Misericordia, which was later united to the great Spedale di Sta. Maria
della Scala. Next comes a series of paintings in the Byzantine manner:
two somewhat imposing altarpieces to the honour of the Baptist and the
Prince of the Apostles respectively (14 and 15); smaller scenes (8 to
13), showing the sort of thing that Duccio glorified and perfected a
little later. Duccio himself is represented by six authentic pictures;
an early work on a small scale (20), the Madonna and Child with Angels
and Franciscan friars; three Saints (22, 23); an important and
characteristic picture of the Madonna and Child with St Peter and St
Dominic, St Paul and St Augustine, Christ blessing from above and Angels
bearing sceptres that end in threefold lilies in token of the Trinity
(28); a triptych (35), including scenes from the lives of Christ and His
Mother that anticipate in some sort the illustrative power of his
masterpiece in the Opera del Duomo; a large altarpiece in many divisions
(47), in which the Blessed Virgin is honoured under two of the titles
assigned to her in the Litany of Loreto--"Queen of Patriarchs," "Queen
of Prophets." By Segna di Tura are several pictures of no great
importance; part of an altar-piece (40); a Madonna (44); St Ansanus
(42); and St Galganus (43). It may be well to mention that St Ansanus,
according to the legend, was the first Apostle of Siena, a Roman
patrician who suffered in the persecution of Diocletian; St Galganus
lived in the twelfth century, was guided by St Michael into the
wilderness, and when prevented by the devil from cutting wood to make a
cross he struck his sword into the hard rock, which became soft as wax
to receive it and then harder than adamant to retain it, and built a
hermitage at the spot. He is usually pictured as here by Segna--a young
knight with flowing golden hair, the miraculous sword forming on the
rocky desert place the sacred sign of Redemption. Simone Martini is not
represented in the Gallery; but there is an altarpiece (51) ascribed to
Lippo Memmi, and fairly characteristic of the religious art of
fourteenth century Siena. A well-preserved picture in the following room
(11), with St Michael as central figure, shows something of Lippo's
manner, but is not a work of the master himself.
In the second room there is a noble collection of paintings by the
Lorenzetti. By the elder brother Pietro are: the Assumption of the
Madonna (5), with the doubting Thomas receiving the sacred girdle; the
Madonna and Child enthroned (21), with a lovely band of Angels
clustering round the throne; four small scenes from the history of the
Order of the Carmelities (28, 29), being apparently the remains of the
predella of a famous picture that Pietro painted for the church of the
Carmine in 1329. The younger Lorenzetti, Ambrogio, is represented by
three masterpieces. The smallest of these (9) is a perfect gem of early
Sienese art; the Madonna is enthroned with both her arms folded round
the Divine Child, who unfolds a scroll to the four Latin Doctors
kneeling in adoration, each receiving His doctrine with a wonderful
expression of rapt devotion, ecstasy and yearning--but each in a totally
different way; the golden haired Virgin Martyrs, Catherine with her
wheel, Dorothy with her flowers, are standing in attendance on the
Queen, and there are six adoring Angels above. The large altar-piece (2)
is a striking and imposing work; the Madonna and Child are attended by
the Magdalene and St Dorothy and the two St Johns, while below is the
Deposition from the Cross: the heads are full of beauty and expression,
and the Deposition shows Ambrogio's dramatic power. The Annunciation
(33), dated the 17th of December 1344, appears to be Ambrogio's last
extant work; it was painted for the Palazzo del Comune and, in addition
to the painter's name, is inscribed with those of the Camarlingo--Don
Francesco, monk of St Galganus--the three Esecutori and the Scrittore or
scribe.[63] High up on the wall above this picture are two half figures
of saints (34, 36), damaged, but genuine Ambrogios. Ascribed to Pietro
Lorenzetti is a curious allegory (37), apparently of the story of sin
and the Atonement of the Cross.
As in sculpture, so in painting, a decline set in after 1348. In the
latter part of the fourteenth century worked Giacomo di Mino del
Pellicciaio, Lippo di Vanni, Bartolo di Maestro Fredi (who died in
1410), Barna or Berna, Luca di Tommè, Paolo di Giovanni, Andrea di
Vanni. They are somewhat mediocre artists, far below the Lorenzetti,
from whom they not unfrequently borrow motives; still, as religious
illustrators, they follow to the best of their limited powers the
greater men who had gone before. Andrea di Vanni is an exceedingly
interesting personality; he was a man of mark in the counsels of the
Riformatori, served the State as ambassador and in other capacities, and
was a fervent disciple of St Catherine, who addressed several letters to
him and whose portrait he painted. Barna can only be studied at San
Gimignano, and the picture ascribed to Andrea di Vanni (59) is not one
of his few authenticated works. But Bartolo di Maestro Fredi is
represented in this Stanza II. by a whole series of paintings (42 to
49); by Luca di Tommè is a signed and dated picture of 1367 (54), in
which the central group of St Anne with a very sweet and girlish
Madonna has great charm; Paolo di Giovanni's Nativity of the Blessed
Virgin (61), partly imitated from a picture by Pietro Lorenzetti, is
bright and pleasant in colour and feeling; by Giacomo di Mino is a
triptych (90). This room contains also some good and characteristic
works of the Florentine school of the Trecento; a Madonna with the
Magdalene and St Catherine of Alexandria and Angels (52), signed by
Taddeo Gaddi; the Death and Coronation of the Madonna (64, 70), by
Spinello Aretino. The connecting link between this group of Sienese
artists and the painters of the Quattrocento is found in Taddeo di
Bartolo (1363-1422), the pupil of Bartolo di Fredi. With no striking
originality nor any great power, Taddeo was a conscientious and
meritorious painter, whose works show a deep religious feeling, and who
exercised considerable influence upon the Sienese school of his day.
Most of the greater painters of the succeeding epoch may be said to have
proceeded, directly or indirectly, from his school. By Taddeo di
Bartolo, besides a number of smaller pictures, there is in this room one
large altar-piece in several divisions (76), signed and dated 1409, of
which the central scene is the Annunciation with St Cosmas and St
Damian, the patron saints of the medical profession.
Sienese painting in the fifteenth century is distinguished by its
mystical tone and its exceedingly conservative, not to say
retrogressive, spirit. No preoccupation with scientific researches, no
problems of movement or anatomy, disturbed the calm of the Sienese
painters; we meet with hardly any portraiture in their work, and even
less mythology. These most turbulent of Italian people who, in De
Commines' famous phrase, "are ever in division, and govern their
commonwealth more fondly than any other town in Italy," chose that their
painters should give them art that was exclusively the handmaid of
religion. While foreign sculptors, such as Donatello and Ghiberti, were
welcomed and employed in Siena, foreign painters were practically
excluded until the last two decades of the century. Great spiritual
beauty in faces, accuracy of drawing within certain limits, with a
profusion and a lavishness in the use of gold and the most brilliant
colours (this the Sienese particularly demanded of their painters),
characterise the school at this epoch. Their strength and their weakness
alike are shown in that their most typical painter is styled the
"Sienese Fra Angelico," while there never was, at least to any good
effect, a Sienese Masaccio. The chief painters whose work falls into
this period are: Sano di Pietro (1406-1481), Domenico di Bartolo (whose
few extant works are dated from 1433 to 1443), Giovanni di Paolo (died
in 1482), the sculptor Lorenzo di Pietro, called Il Vecchietta
(1412-1480), Stefano di Giovanni called Sassetta (died in 1450). And
then, following after these, a second group: Matteo di Giovanni, who was
born about 1435 and died in 1495; Francesco di Giorgio Martini
(1439-1502), Neroccio di Bartolommeo Landi (1447-1500), Benvenuto di
Giovanni (1436-1518)--these three the pupils of Lorenzo di Pietro.
These painters and their contemporaries are represented in the four
following rooms of the gallery. In Stanza III., a curious little panel
by Domenico di Bartolo (19), with a devout inscription in honour of the
Madonna, signed _Dominicus_ and dated 1433, contrasts strongly with the
more typical Sienese works that surround it. The composition, the types
of Angels, the naked Child, all show ill-assimilated Florentine
influences. The Child in its unidealised humanity is the first nude
infant in Sienese art; all Sano's babes, for instance, are more or less
clothed, already dreaming divine dreams. Domenico was a native of
Asciano who came to Siena, and is said to have become the pupil of
Taddeo di Bartolo; all his work, however, is a kind of protest against
the mystical Sienese tradition in painting. Certain great frescoes of
his, which we shall see later in the Spedale, stand alone in the story
of the art of Siena. Then follow some small pictures by Sassetta (21 to
24), fairly representative. Giovanni di Paolo--a prolific and always
agreeable, if somewhat monotonous and weak painter--is more fully
represented here, in a series of Madonnas and Saints, scriptural scenes
and mediaeval legends. Two of his pictures (28 and 55) are signed and
dated 1453 and 1440 respectively. His Last Judgment (27), the predella
of a picture painted for San Domenico in 1445, is particularly
interesting; much of it is the usual tradition, but the Paradiso on our
left is full of most poetical and fanciful details, slightly reminding
us of Angelico's work in the Florentine Academy, but conceived in a
curiously different spirit. The scenes from the life of St Galganus (53)
are a favourable example of his ingenuous narrative power. When Il
Vecchietta turns from sculpture to painting, he lays aside his science
and follows the Sienese tradition with the rest. His San Bernardino (63)
has considerable interest, being to all intents and purposes a
contemporary portrait. A large altarpiece, badly preserved (67), is one
of the works that he painted as an offering for the church of the
Spedale, and is signed: "The work of Laurentius Petri, sculptor, alias
El Vecchietta, for his devotion." The shrine, painted on both sides with
figures of Andrea Gallerani and other Sienese saints, comes from the
same place. We may notice the Madonna and Child with St Francis and St
Dominic (66), by Pier Francesco Fiorentino, a Florentine priest who
painted in the latter part of the fifteenth century, and who shows
himself as reactionary as any master of Siena; his works abound at San
Gimignano and throughout the Val d'Elsa. Mr Berenson ascribes to him the
four little _trionfi_ at the other end of the present room--the
Triumphs of Death, Chastity, Love and Fame (4 to 7), partly after
Petrarch--which were at one time erroneously attributed to Andrea di
Vanni.
The next two rooms, Stanza IV. and Stanza V., are entirely devoted to
Sano di Pietro. Sano, or Ansano, is the most mystical, the most
genuinely inspired by religious devotion, of all the painters of Siena;
like Fra Angelico, his life was in perfect harmony with his art, _pictor
famosus et homo totus deditus Deo_--so is he described in the document
that registers his death--"a famous painter and a man utterly dedicated
to God"; but, unlike Angelico, he was a married man and a father of
children. In these two rooms he can be thoroughly studied in all his
phases. His brush moves in a somewhat restricted field. It is always the
Madonna with her Divine Child, surrounded by saints and adored by
Seraphim, now listening to the music of attendant Angels, now crowned by
her Son with the diadem of Paradise. Or we have saints, men and women,
rapt in ecstasy and already of another world. Sometimes monks or nuns
are introduced, kneeling at Our Lady's feet or worshipping her Child, or
the portrait of the donor--frequently (as in number 9 of Stanza IV.)
some devout nun who had it painted "for the soul of her father and of
her mother"; but such figures are always very small indeed, as though to
reduce the human element to a minimum. The faces are always very
sweet--the Angels, with the flame of the Holy Spirit resting upon their
foreheads, perhaps especially so--the colours are of that almost
shadowless brightness that the Sienese loved. Among the Sienese saints
introduced we may notice (Stanza IV., 25) the founder of the Gesuati,
the Beato Giovanni Colombini, kneeling at the Madonna's feet; he was a
leader in the religious life of Tuscany when St Catherine was a child,
and the Colombini were connected by marriage with the Benincasa.
One picture in Stanza IV. (20) is unique among Sano's works, and may be
described as a mystical treatment of contemporary history. Pope Calixtus
III. is enthroned in full pontifical robes, his cope being buckled with
the Borgia arms, while below appears Siena with the Tower of the Palazzo
and the Campanile of the Duomo; mules are being driven into the city,
laden with sacks of grain marked with the _balzana_, the muleteer being
armed and looking round in fear to see if he is pursued. In the clouds
the Madonna appears, to commend her city to the Holy Father, a scroll
bearing her words: "O worthy Pastor to my Christian people, to thee
henceforth do I render the care of Siena; to her let all thy kindly
feeling turn." And we have his answer: "Virgin Mother, dear Consort to
God, if thy Calixtus is worthy of so great a gift, nought save death
shall sever me from Siena." Though somewhat hastily painted, and though
the character of Calixtus is hardly more realised than in the case of
Giotto's popes, the historical interest of the picture, which was
executed for the Palazzo Pubblico, is considerable. In 1455, when
Piccinino the great condottiere--in secret understanding with Giberto da
Correggio, the commander of the Sienese forces, and with Ghino di Pietro
Bellanti and other traitors within the walls--was preparing to make war
upon the Republic, Calixtus (Alfonso Borgia), then newly-elected Pope,
took Siena under his protection and sent the ecclesiastical forces to
its support. He urged the Sienese to prosecute the war to the bitter
end, declared that their cause was his own. "We shall maintain inviolate
your own and the common peace and quiet of all Italy," he said to the
Captain of the People and the Priors of the Commune in a bull dated
August 14th, 1455, "even to the shedding of our own blood, if needs be."
"You have a Pope," wrote Enea Silvio Piccolomini (who was not yet
Cardinal), a few days later to the Balìa, "most affectionate towards
[Illustration: _Madonna and Child._
_Detail from Duccio's Altarpiece._]
your Republic, as you perceive; know how to take advantage of it, for
his courage is as great as his charity, nor has he anything at heart
save justice."[64] When the Balìa wanted to compromise and make peace,
Calixtus would not hear of it, but sent abundant grain and provisions
into the hungry city. This is the situation represented in the picture,
which may confidently be dated 1455; but a comparison with the Pope's
medals shows that Sano has hardly done justice to the rather striking
features of the first Pope of the House of Borgia.
There is an analogous picture by Sano in Stanza V., San Bernardino (2)
as champion of the devotion of the Holy Name, as the inscription, "I
have manifested Thy Name to men," indicates. Painted in 1460, sixteen
years after the Saint's death, it is less a contemporary portrait than
that by Lorenzo di Pietro. All the other pictures in this room are in
Sano's usual mystical style. There is an interval of thirty years
between the date of the Madonna of San Biagio (4), the saintly Bishop
whose miracles and martyrdom are so quaintly depicted in the predella,
and that of the Assumption (8, 9); but there is little, if any, advance
in technique or development in style. But no sympathetic student of
Sienese painting can ever find Sano di Pietro monotonous, or otherwise
than fascinating.
In Stanza VI., a picture by Sano di Pietro (2) in the composition of the
principal scene--the Madonna and Child surrounded by kneeling
Saints--shows a certain resemblance to Fra Angelico. In the Crucifixion
above, St Francis is receiving the stigmata, and two Franciscan nuns are
aiding the holy women to tend the Blessed Virgin; the predella, however,
is by a later hand. The chief contents of this room are the works of
Matteo di Giovanni, on the whole the most powerful and most versatile
Sienese painter of the fifteenth century, and Neroccio di Bartolommeo
Landi, a "Simone come to life again" in the air of the Renaissance.[65]
By the former are three beautiful Madonnas (5, 7, 9), somewhat varied in
type and style. By the latter, whose figures are stately and gracious
like those of his statues, very sweet and winning in expression, are the
large enthroned Madonna and Saints (8); four smaller pictures (11, 13,
14, 22), in two of which no one can fail to be struck with the painter's
exquisite realisation of the personality of St Catherine; and the signed
and dated Madonna and Child of 1476, with St Michael and San Bernardino
(19), one of the master's earlier works. Francesco di Giorgio Martini is
represented by three very small pictures (15, 16, 17) of Old Testament
scenes, an Annunciation (21), and three Madonnas (20, 23, 24). We have
also some interesting works by lesser masters. By Pietro di Domenico
(1457-1501), who was influenced by the Umbrians, is the Adoration of the
Shepherds with St Galganus and St Martin (3), the Galganus having struck
his sword into the rock at the Divine Child's feet; the date seems to
read 1400, only because the latter part has been obliterated. By
Guidoccio Cozzarelli (1450-1516) are a Saint Sebastian (25) and Our Lady
as protector of the Arts (29), the Queen of the Artisans.
Stanza VII. contains unimportant fragments and engravings.
With the opening of the Cinquecento, Siena grew dissatisfied with the
antiquated methods of her native artists. Three mediocre painters,
indeed, carried on their traditional manner well into the sixteenth
century: Bernardino Fungai (1460-1516), Girolamo di Benvenuto
(1470-1524), the son of Benvenuto di Giovanni, and Giacomo Pacchiarotti
(1474-1540), Fungai's pupil, a turbulent fellow, whose pusillanimous,
half-crazy attempts to pose as a political revolutionary are
immortalised in a _novella_ by Pietro Fortini and a poem by Robert
Browning. But in the meanwhile, better masters had been brought to Siena
from other cities; Luca Signorelli and his pupil, Girolamo Genga, from
Cortona and Urbino, had come to decorate the palace of the Magnifico;
Bernardino Pinturicchio of Perugia had been hired by the Piccolomini,
and his great fellow-citizen, Pietro Perugino, was painting altarpieces
for Sant'Agostino and San Francesco.
And, greater than any of these, there came one whom Siena made her own:
Giovanni Antonio Bazzi (1477-1549), presently to be known as Sodoma. The
son of an artisan of Vercelli, Bazzi had gone to Milan and fallen under
the influence of Leonardo da Vinci, though it is doubtful whether he
actually became his pupil. In 1501 certain merchants, agents of the
Spannocchi, brought the young man to Siena, with which city--save for
the short period from 1508 to 1510, when he worked in Rome mainly for
the rich Sienese banker, Agostino Chigi--he was henceforth associated.
Morelli regarded Bazzi as "the most important and gifted artist of the
school of Leonardo--the one who is most easily confounded with the great
master himself." Frequently careless and very unequal in his execution,
the exquisite beauty of his women's faces can hardly be surpassed; and
"in his best moments, when he brought all his powers into play, Sodoma
produced works which are worthy to rank with the most perfect examples
of Italian art."[66] He was a wild and reckless fellow enough in his
life, passionately addicted to horse-racing, and a lover of strange
beasts and birds. Of these latter he kept a whole collection round him,
great and small of every kind that he could get, until, in Vasari's
phrase, "his house seemed verily to be the Ark of Noah." In a list of
his goods which Bazzi drew up for taxation in 1531, eight race-horses
and a number of these other creatures are set down, and the catalogue
ends--may my fair readers pardon me the quotation!--with "tre bestiacce
cattive, che son tre donne."
[Illustration: _Bastion outside Porta Pispini erected by Baldassare
Peruzzi_]
These varied influences combined with that of Florence to produce
eclecticism; "a most singular and charming eclecticism, saved from the
pretentiousness and folly usually controlling such movements by the
sense for grace and beauty even to the last seldom absent from the
Sienese."[67] The three principal Sienese painters of this kind are
Girolamo del Pacchia (1477-1535), Baldassare Peruzzi (1481-1536), and
Domenico di Giacomo di Pace (1486-1550), called Mecarino or Beccafumi.
Girolamo del Pacchia was the son of a Hungarian father and a Sienese
mother; he learned the first principles of art in Siena (probably from
Fungai), and then went to Florence and Rome, returning to Siena in 1508
where he soon fell under Bazzi's influence. Like Pacchiarotti (with whom
he used to be confused) Girolamo became involved in plots and
conspiracies, and was forced to fly from Siena. Baldassare Peruzzi is
one of the most famous architects of the Renaissance. As a painter he
first worked under Pinturicchio, then went to Rome where he laboured
much for the Popes and Agostino Chigi, falling under the influence of
Bazzi and later of Raphael, whom he succeeded as chief architect of San
Pietro. In the sack of Rome he was taken by the Spaniards, cruelly
tortured, and escaped to Siena in a state of abject poverty. The Sienese
made him public architect to the Republic, and afterwards Capomaestro of
the Duomo. There are a number of buildings attributed to him in Siena,
mostly doubtful. He ended his days in the Eternal City, working on the
fabric of San Pietro. Of Baldassare's paintings Siena only possesses a
few of his earliest and some of his very latest. Domenico di Giacomo was
the son of a contadino on the estate of Lorenzo Beccafumi (whom we have
already met in the political field) in the plain of the Cortine near
Montaperti. Lorenzo found him, like Giotto, drawing on the sand and
stones the movements of the animals under his charge, took him into his
household, had him taught to paint, and gave him his own family name.
"Domenico was a virtuous and excellent person," says Vasari, "and
studious in his art, but excessively solitary." He worked at Rome, Genoa
and other places, but told his friend and admirer, Vasari, that he could
do nothing away from the air of Siena. At different epochs he imitated
Perugino, Bazzi, Fra Bartolommeo, even Michelangelo; an unequal but
imaginative painter, he excels in the treatment of light and shade. Two
other artists of this epoch deserve special mention--Andrea Piccinelli,
called Del Brescianino, the son of a Brescian, who painted between 1507
and 1525, first following Girolamo del Pacchia, afterwards imitating Fra
Bartolommeo; and Bartolommeo Neroni, called Il Riccio, whose work
belongs to the middle of the century, the son-in-law and chief pupil of
Bazzi. To complete the sketch of Sienese art in the first half of the
Cinquecento, we must add a painter who comes slightly earlier than these
two: Matteo Balducci, a native of the Perugian contado, who appears
originally to have been Pinturicchio's assistant and pupil, and
afterwards to have become a pupil of Bazzi.[68] His work, however, shows
no trace of the influence of the latter master, but is purely Umbrian in
character.
In Stanza VIII., besides a series of small pictures painted for the
Confraternity of Fontegiusta (1, 2, 35, 36), is Bazzi's famous fresco of
Christ at the Column (27), even in its damaged condition unmistakably
divine. His Judith (29) is likewise a work of great beauty; but the St
Catherine ascribed to him (32) is unworthy alike of the painter and of
the subject. The two frescoes (8, 9), representing a Ransom of Prisoners
and the Flight of Aeneas from Troy, come from the palace of Pandolfo
Petrucci; they were executed by Girolamo Genga, but the composition is
probably by Luca Signorelli. Two Madonnas (12 and 30) are ascribed by Mr
Berenson to Girolamo del Pacchia. By Matteo Balducci are an Angel (21)
and the Madonna and Child, with St Catherine and San Bernardino (34).
There is also a Madonna (26) by Girolamo Magagni, called Giomo, a pupil
of Bazzi's, who robbed his master's studio while the latter lay sick in
Florence. Both in this room and the next there is some excellent wood
carving by Antonio Barili.
The gems of Stanza IX. are two pictures hung under the name of
Pinturicchio--a Nativity (28), which Mr Berenson attributes to Matteo
Balducci, and a Madonna and Child holding a pomegranate, with the little
St John, against a gold background (29), recognised by the same
authority as an early work of Baldassare Peruzzi. We have several
Madonnas by Fungai (1, 21, 23, 24, 33); five Saints by Pacchiarotti (5);
a whole series of Umbrian pictures--Saints (2, 37), Virtues (10, 11, 15,
19), and a Madonna (17)--attributed to Balducci by Mr Berenson. By
Balducci is also the Madonna and Child with St Jerome and St Francis
(14). There are dated pictures by Guidoccio Cozzarelli (7) of 1482, and
by Andrea di Niccolò (8), an unimportant painter of the end of the
Quattrocento. The Trinità, with the two St Johns, St Cosmas and St
Damian, is one of Beccafumi's earliest and best works; it was painted in
1512 for the Spedale, as the presence of the two patrons of the healing
art--a kind of mediaeval duplication of Aesculapius--indicates.
The long hall, Stanza X., contains larger pictures of the fifteenth and
sixteenth centuries. The arrangement being rather confused, it will,
perhaps, be best to take them more or less chronologically. By Matteo di
Giovanni are three smaller Madonnas near the entrance--one (12) being
rather doubtful--and an important altarpiece of the Madonna and Child
with Angels and Saints (36). Guidoccio Cozzarelli is represented by a St
Catherine exchanging hearts with the Christ (4), Vecchietta by the
interesting sketch (5) for his bronze tabernacle that is now on the high
altar of the Duomo, Francesco di Giorgio by a signed Nativity of our
Lord (41) and the Coronation of the Blessed Virgin (44)--two large
pictures curiously lacking the usual Sienese grace and refinement,
showing to some extent the influence of Signorelli. A worthless picture
of the Passion (29), which should not even questionably be connected
with this painter's name, shows the Sienese school at its weakest and
worst. Benvenuto di Giovanni is seen to considerable advantage in a
triptych (39), signed and dated 1475; the central compartment, the
Madonna and Child with Angels, is particularly attractive. His Ascension
of Christ (37), on the other hand, from the church of Sant' Eugenio,
signed and dated 1491, is rather harsh and uninspired. By Fungai are a
Madonna with Saints (30), signed and dated 1512, and an Assumption (45),
a subject in which the painter succeeded better elsewhere. It is not
easy to distinguish the early style of Pacchiarotti from that of Fungai;
the altarpiece (14) is said to be by the master and pupil in
collaboration; the Ascension (24), with its predella (23), dry and hard
with uncouth and unrefined types, and the Visitation (31), in which the
white-robed girlish Madonna has much sweetness and charm, are by
Pacchiarotti. Girolamo di Benvenuto is represented by the best picture
he ever painted (which, after all, is rather faint praise), signed and
dated 1508, representing the Madonna and Child attended by Angels and
Saints (17), with the two St Catherines kneeling before the throne--the
Alexandrian of the Wheels being obviously an excellent portrait of a
young Sienese lady of the Cinquecento.
The famous Deposition from the Cross (13) is an early work by Bazzi,
practically the first important picture that he painted on his first
coming to Siena; it is entirely in the Lombard or Milanese style,
recalling the work of Luini. The scenes in the predella are by another
hand. The Prayer in the Garden (2) and the Descent into Limbo (46), the
remains of a series of frescoes which he painted for the Compagnia di
Santa Croce, are later and have suffered from restoration; in the latter
the figure of Eve is exceedingly lovely, one of those exquisite
presentments of women in which this painter excels. Girolamo del Pacchia
is represented by an Annunciation and Visitation (7), painted in 1518, a
beautiful work, showing the influence
[Illustration: VIA GIOVANNI DUPRÈ]
of Albertinelli. An attractive _tondo_ ascribed to him, the Holy Family
with St Antony of Padua (35), was given back by Morelli to its proper
author, Girolamo Genga. A very Perugian Nativity (26), hung as
Pinturicchio, is ascribed by Mr Berenson to Balducci, by whom is also
the predella (25), belonging to a picture that we shall see in Santo
Spirito--an excellent little work representing the Pietà between the
reception of the Stigmata by St Francis and St Catherine respectively.
By Andrea del Brescianino is an uninteresting altarpiece (9), with a
predella (8); while of Bartolommeo Neroni's pictures the best is the
Coronation of the Madonna (47), with its predella (49), from the church
of San Francesco in Asciano.
But, of all the later Sienese, Domenico Beccafumi is best represented
here. His Reception of the Stigmata by St Catherine, with St Benedict
and St Jerome (22), the three smaller scenes from her life (19, 20, 21)
forming its predella--her receiving the Dominican habit, her miraculous
Communion, her mystical Espousals--is one of the most beautiful pictures
in the whole range of Sienese art. It was painted for the Olivetan
convent of St Benedict outside the Porta Tufi. "This picture," wrote
Vasari, "for its harmonious colouring and excellent modelling, was and
is still greatly praised. Likewise in the predella he did certain
stories in distemper with incredible spirit and vivacity, and with such
facility in drawing that they could not have greater grace, and
nevertheless seem done without a trouble in the world." The treatment of
light and shade is admirable. This is one of his earlier works; the
Birth of Mary (6) is later and less excellent, but praised by Vasari for
its effects of light. The unfinished Fall of the Rebel Angels (25),
confused in composition and mannered in style, shows Beccafumi at his
worst. It struck Vasari as something original, _una pioggia d'ignudi
molto bella_, "a right lovely rain of nude figures," and he admired and
wondered at their foreshortening, _certi scorti d'ignudi bellissimi_.
The Descent of Christ into Limbo (28), from San Francesco, is a far
nobler thing--the Penitent Thief, following the Saviour, is very
strikingly conceived and executed. Here also are several of Beccafumi's
cartoons for the pavement of the Duomo, chiefly scenes from the history
of Moses and Aaron, with one from that of Elijah. Ascribed to him is
also the _tondo_ (34) of the Madonna and Child with two Saints.
Over the door to Stanza XI. is a frescoed Last Supper of 1595 by
Bernardo Poccetti, from the Certosa di Pontignano. Stanza XI. contains a
number of pictures of different schools, mostly unimportant. There are
two Saints, St Mary Magdalene (3) and St Catherine of Alexandria (115)
of 1512, ascribed to Fra Bartolommeo, but certainly the work of Mariotto
Albertinelli; and an Annunciation (7) by the Venetian Paris Bordone. Two
_tondi_ are among the greatest treasures of the gallery: the Holy Family
by Pinturicchio (45), a work of exquisite beauty and poetic sentiment;
and the Adoration of the Divine Child (11) by Bazzi. The latter, painted
for the Hermitage of Lecceto, is one of the earliest works that Bazzi
executed in Siena, and represents, as Signor Frizzoni has noted, a
certain union of Tuscan taste with the artist's native Lombard manner.
During the last quarter of the sixteenth and the first quarter of the
seventeenth century a number of capable artists upheld, not unworthily,
the traditions of Sienese painting: Arcangiolo Salimbeni and his son
Ventura, Alessandro Casolani, Pietro Sorri, Francesco Vanni, Francesco
Rustici (Rustichino) and Rutilio Manetti, whose works are still for the
most part in the churches for which they were painted. Rutilio Manetti,
who died in 1639, may be regarded as the last of the great line of
Sienese artists. But even in the nineteenth century the names of
Giovanni Duprè, in sculpture, and Amos Cassioli (a native, like Domenico
di Bartolo, of Asciano), in painting, have won renown beyond the walls
of Siena.