[The New York Review of Books]
The Renaissance in Siena: Art for a City.
Although part of the UNESCO, the city of Siena in Tuscany maintains an air of impenetrable mystery. In contrast to the close and traditional rival Florence, this city takes shape in the surrounding countryside, from the curves of the three hills on which is situated on top of volcanoes and strange underground springs that characterize its territory. The deepest mystery surrounding Siena, then, is precisely the mystery of our human relationship with nature. There is no country more harmonious and more natural rolling hills that stretch from Piazza del Campo, the shell-shaped town square, yet just the sweetness of these hills reveals the fact that this is one of the most exploited of the world.
The practice has led to sustainable human and natural rhythms to complete a balance so that sometimes the trees seem to clap their hands in exultation, as the trees of the Psalms. Yet among these forest trees rejoicing there are segments of land in which they emerge as desolate barren gypsum blocks in a hermit's cave. A group of local monks have built one of the most beautiful monasteries in the middle of a plain plaster and called Monte Oliveto Maggiore. The grapes, which fortunately is able to grow in clay soil of the region produces red wines of rare quality, including Chianti, Brunello di Montalcino and Vino Nobile di Montepulciano (all created with methods acquired from the Etruscans). The same underground storage medium contains alum, natural gas and alabaster, as well as artesian wells from which spring water hot and cold, the legacy of ancient volcanoes.
Looking south from the town hall of Siena, Palazzo Pubblico, even now you can not imagine what or who may suddenly emerge to view: through the same valley (also UNESCO site), it's been the leader Etruscan Lars Porsenna, moving from his stronghold in Chiusi, in 510 BC, and the traitor Lucio Sergio Catilina, fleeing for his life after his failed attempt to assassinate Cicero in 63 BC In the thirteenth century. there had been banished to Ghino heel, perched in its volcanic peak in Radicofani, hidden to surprise to the travelers. In 1503 there was Cesare Borgia, coming to Rome, Siena and threatening total destruction if they had not delivered the Moderator of Siena, Pandolfo Petrucci (who was exiled for a short period, and survived far to Cesare Borgia). Galileo spent the first six months of his sentence to life imprisonment for heresy away from Siena on the border in San Quirico D'Orcia in 1633, however, the conditions of his detention was rightly considered too luxurious, and the sentence was converted into house arrest near Florence in 1634.
In the nineteenth century, on the same street and on the same hills of Mount Amiata, David Lazzaretti of Arcidosso, who had self-proclaimed messiah, called for the end of the sinners as long as the Police were able to achieve its end.
In these same areas, the first Etruscans may have come from Asia Minor, walking at a slow pace of their herds of cattle. Later, groups of Roman slaves marched in their legs in chains and noisy Roman veterans in their armor of bronze, followed centuries later by the Lombards in barbaric splendor, then by the Christian pilgrims to Rome, and thousands of years later by the Nazi convoy of moving northward in their jeep, chased by the Allies.
Before the era of the car manufacturer Ferrari Enzo and sample automotive Tazio Nuvolari, the word was associated with the rapid speed of the horse's most famous banker of the sixteenth century, the Sienese Agostino Chigi, whose companions included Cesare Borgia, Machiavelli, and two popes: Pope terrible [NDT in the text in Italian] Julius II, and the "shy rabbit" Leo X, all travelers along this road for Siena breathtaking.
During the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, people were everywhere considered Siena mad, like the Sienese women were known to be the most beautiful in Italy. The men were certainly eccentric. Even a figure as measured by the Sienese Pope Pius II cured her arthritis with a paste of boiled weasel, interspersed with pieces of ostrich meat. And when the Renaissance painter Giovanni Bazzi, from the practical Piedmont, reached Siena, he began to dress with colored silk, to keep a zoo, and take the attitude that earned him the nickname of Sodom. His talent earned him an honorary citizen of Siena, a good marriage and the condition of the landowner.
Another sixteenth century Sienese went to Alexandria in Egypt, to seek his fortune, and over time was converted Islam. The past thirty years on the shores of the Mediterranean made him suffer the lack of home, but unfortunately, the two men who accompany him back to Siena, they decided to kill him and rob him of his earnings before he could tell the story of his life to the city's official chronicler , a priest with red hair, a scholar of history and, in some cases, gossip, whose real name was Sigmund Ticci, but that is still known as Sigismondo Tizio, (guy is the Italian translation of "guy"). Sigismondo was hoping to write all three stories: a story of the councils of the Church, "Historia barbaric", and a history of Siena from its foundation by the Etruscans, to his own time. He died in 1528 the age of 70, while he was still writing. Of these three projects, only to survive the history of Siena with its five thousand pages, preserved in the Vatican Library through the efforts of a Sienese Pope Alessandro VII Chigi.
The beauty of the women of Siena has been celebrated in literature and art, not to mention the news of Sigismund, who took holy orders after a disastrous affair. Paintings and sculptures evoke a physical well-marked: women with long almond-shaped eyes and a light complexion, many of them with hair dyed blond unlikely (in the time before the water oxygenated, women dyed their hair and deliver them on the slopes Wide hat Straw specifically designed without a crown, spraying the locks with lemon juice, and then sitting in the sun so they could expose their hair to its rays, but not their skin). Those same almond-shaped eyes and the same dyed hair, were already present in the temples and tombs of the Etruscans. Just as the clothes looked, elegant dances, and shining shoes to fashion. The sinuous lines of the Sienese women and their dances evoke the graceful curves of the landscape, and gently curved roads of a city built to accommodate the ridges of the hills.
Yet this landscape, apparently thousands of years, is constantly changing. What we see today the campaign has been severely deforested, and strangely recently. Sigismondo Tizio describes the sale of the forest in the city in 1508, and note carefully the following drainage, erosion and crop failure. During the last thirty years, the changes of agricultural machinery have changed the form of straw bales dotting the fields: in the 70s they were like small box-shaped parcel, tied with wire, and now are huge cylinders tied with ropes, plastic or wrapped in plastic covers. Changes in agricultural machinery have also changed the shape of the grooves and the lives of peasants, the abolition of sharecropping and efforts towards mass literacy did the rest.
People working in the Sienese countryside have never been so rich, thanks to the fact that no longer have to give half of what they produce to the feudal baron of the place, and are also able to produce much more with their tractors than did in the past with the fork and hoe. It is no longer farmers, but farmers who use the same sophisticated methods used by their German counterparts, American and Canadian, the term that describes them, farmers, reflecting the fundamental change in the nature of their work.
Farmers of Siena countryside, do not kill more than a pig for Christmas, but eat ham, sausage, liver and the dish called "liver" throughout the year. In addition, rural families do not separate for months because of the ancient ritual of transhumance, when men and boys spent most of the year following degrees flocks of sheep along the Italian peninsula, leaving their wives, daughters and younger children at home. Already thirty years' ago transhumance was only for the Sardinians (some of them supplement their earnings with kidnapping for ransom), nowadays the shepherds are mostly from Balkan countries like Albania and Macedonia.
today Siena is also famous for a show of Renaissance solid Etruscan roots, the race called the Palio, held twice a year, whose name derives from the ultimate prize: a banner in honor of the Virgin Mary, the patron saint of Siena more important. There is no doubt however, when the Palio makes its appearance in a cart driven by oxen and white with long horns, that the ritual should probably go back to the later Iron Age, when Uni, the Etruscan-eyed Juno ox and the white arms, she was the queen of heaven. After two hours of the official parade and flag-wavers, 10 horses are for 3 times around the Piazza del Campo, here covered with earth carried by each of the seventeen districts of the city, called districts. The shell-shaped square is crowded with about 70,000 Sienese and tourists, the race that lasts three minutes, it's really exciting, with its jockeys riding bareback, each armed with a whip made with dried bull's penis. A horse that reaches the finish line without a jockey can still win.
However, the attitude toward the Palio is changing. Too many horses are broken ankles as he ran around the narrow track, especially the thoroughbreds. The protests have become even more insistent when, two years ago, a beautiful thoroughbred called Amoroso slammed his head on a support of travertine along the track and died on the spot (in the past, horses were injured discreetly moved to the side streets and disposed of ). In recent years, the race was slow and deliberately selected horse breeds are more resistant, but all in all even if the Palio change his choreography seemingly ageless, not doing it for the first time. In the sixteenth and seventeenth century, horse racing took place outside of town on flat land known as "La Lizza", or outside the north gate of Siena, Porta Camollia and these were probably also Racetracks Etruscan times.
Another legacy of the Renaissance is the Monte dei Paschi, formerly a mountain of liens maintained by the city of Siena, and now the bank in operation without interruption oldest in the world. Founded in 1472, the Monte dei Paschi, provides evidence that Siena was a city bank at least since medieval times, symbolizing the intelligence of a people whose city has no natural resource, and, unlike most Italian cities, even easy access to water. Instead Siena is a tribute to man's genius, one of the few places in the world where a space designed by a committee, the Piazza del Campo, has proved a huge success of the architecture. Today
Siena enjoys a revival of well-being, thanks in large part to the Monte dei Paschi and two first-class universities: the University of Siena, founded in the Middle Ages, and the more recent University for Foreigners. The Monte dei Paschi, for example, has sponsored in part a spectacular exhibition of Sienese art recently staged at the National Gallery in London, but also behind many of the publications that are appparse in recent years on various aspects of city life. The extensive public archives, meticulously preserved in a sixteenth century palace, dating back to medieval times, and also contain pages of eclectic Chronicles of Sigismondo Tizio to add details. Despite the Sienese are famous for their closed society, they are extremely hospitable. An inscription in the northern port city states "COR MAGIS TIBI SENA Pandit," that is "Siena opens its heart to you completely," and this is true. Siena opens its heart really. And it is impossible not to respond in kind.
Because of the old rivalry with Florence, his place in history Italian culture, and especially in art, often with biting malice was limited by the most hostile strangers. The biographer of artists of the sixteenth century, Giorgio Vasari, came from another city rival Tuscany, Arezzo, and idolized the Florentine Michelangelo. Machiavelli is that Francesco Guicciardini, historians of the sixteenth century, were Florentines. The gossip Sigismondo Tizio, the only authoritative witness to the defense of Siena, did not adhere to standards never haughty historical objectivity, his record was transcribed once in the seventeenth century by the Sienese, and once in the eighteenth century by a Florentine, but only now is going to be published. Consequently
However, recent research seems surprisingly Siena prosperous and modern. The city went ahead with his pace, following their own standards of beauty, a beauty deeply rooted in tradition, and only by understanding that the Sienese love the continuity you can truly appreciate the singular grace of Sienese art. Thanks to the thoroughness of the State of Siena, the commissioned works of art and architecture in medieval and modern Siena can be linked to specific individuals and their families. Rather than isolated objects, they become the threads of a larger, colorful fabric of life.
The archives also reveal, as Fabrizio Nevola shows in his excellent study of urban planning in Renaissance Siena (*), that much of what that seems to medieval Siena today, is actually the result of a restoration of the nineteenth century - the Gothic Revival, Gothic, rather than for himself. Nevola belongs to a group of young scholars, including Mauro Musso, Philippa Jackson and Roberto Bartalini, which have shed light on this by studying the past Siena. As a showcase for these studies, the exhibition at the National Gallery "Renaissance Siena: Art for a City", was a great success. The works exhibited were considerable, not only for their quality, but also for their links with ordinary people. One thing is to look at the astonishing portrait of the young nobleman Antonio Spannocchi plaster made from Sodom, and quite another to understand the pressures Spannocchi that it was making when posing in front of the eccentric artist, thanks to the self-Sodoma at Monte Oliveto Maggiore can imagine the contrast between the sober and full of grace Spannocchi merchant, and waistcoat and harlequin tights colors of Sodom.
Spannocchi Antonio's father, Ambrose, was the banker for Pope Pius II, using this connection important to bring his company into a top position among the banking houses of Siena. Antonio was born late in life Spannocchi Ambrose, perhaps in 1475, the head of the family died shortly after. With his brother Julius, and then, Anthony was catapulted to drive business for which he was too young to be properly prepared. In any case, the portrait shows a man of Sodom with the appearance of a boy, very handsome, with big blue eyes, but without any particular initiative or intelligence.
In the course of their business in Rome and Siena, the brothers Spannocchi were headed downhill towards a close relationship with another Sienese banker, Agostino Chigi, he has large bright eyes - but the eyes of Chigi had that kind of expression which freezes the blood in the veins of his opponents (JP Morgan admired him very much). Agostino Chigi, in fact, soon became the largest Spannocchi Ambrose, what would be his friend Raphael to Perugino and Pinturicchio, a supernatural genius. At the time of the portrait Sodom, and Antonio Agostino Chigi Spannocchi shared a barber, and perhaps much more, that would not have ever shared was the sheer clarity of vision of the Chigi or his lust for wealth and power and what they could provide. Within two years after completion of the portrait, Spannocchi Antonio died, the company Spannocchi failed, and Agostino Chigi became the richest man in Italy.
On the occasion of their marriage in 1494 concurrent, Antonio Corn and Julius commissioned a Sienese master a number of oblong paintings called back. These illustrated Boccaccio's story of "the patient Griselda, a peasant girl who is made to marry a nobleman. Because of the differences their environment, the husband submit his wife to a sadistic series of tests (undress in public, pretend to divorce, to hide their children and say they were dead, confine it in the country) to which Griselda is subject to unconditional obedience. Eventually the husband returns to his isolated and impoverished wife and their grown children, to reunite the family in some form of union can be blessed so cruel after a history of caste and gender. From panel to panel, we can see the unknown Master of the Griselda, become more proficient, developing a style that interprets the attraction of the Renaissance to classical antiquity, with a sudden and graceful Gothic proportions with extremely elongated. The wickedness of the husband of Griselda is attenuated from the true elegance of what is around him, and spins of exotic domestic dogs and monkeys jumping between the columns.
Twenty years later, the old socio Spannocchi brothers, Agostino Chigi, Raphael was commissioned to a ceiling that illustrated the story of Cupid and Psyche, a choice that could not be more different from the panels Spannocchi for the theme for interpretation. First, the myth of Cupid and Psyche was a long history of gold taken the ass of Apuleius, rather than the chivalrous Decameron. The style of Raphael for this committee, had a distinctive sculpture inspired by the ancients, light years away from the light grace of the Master of Gothic Griselda; also the characters of Raphael, as usual for the ancients, were considerably naked.
There is also a big difference in content. Psyche has none of the patience of Griselda vile when the events are adverse, despite the fact that the perpetrator, not a mortal husband, was the god of love himself. Psyche stands out not for his patience, but for his hard work tirelessly, working with relentless determination to achieve immortality. Chigi probably liked the laborious enterprise for both men and women. His second wife, Griselda, the patient came from a humble family, but the great banker put it to the test or the publicly humiliated on the contrary he had himself portrayed by master Venetian Sebastiano Luciani.
With Sigismondo Tizio, we can reconstruct the human drama behind the amazing complex of artistic commissions in 1509 that celebrated the marriage of Borghese Petrucci and Victoria Piccolomini, both from prominent families of Siena, and who provided the material for a section the exhibition in London which brought together all the arts, from ceramics (including floor tiles and pots and pans) architecture on a grand scale. Two of the best painters in Italy, Luca Signorelli and Pinturicchio, did the painting of the wedding reception, with hymns for chastity and family harmony: Pinturicchio's fresco of Penelope at her loom is one of the treasures of the collection of the Standing National Gallery. It is rare to find scenes from Homer depicted in Italian art of the sixteenth century, and the choice testifies to the cultural ambitions of the Petrucci family. The fresco is also notable for the importance of the cat playing with a ball of yarn, Penelope, and given the Petrucci family affection for his animals (the red dog of the groom's father, Pandolfo Petrucci, the governor of Siena , appears in another fresco by Pinturicchio, in a cathedral of Siena), the image is probably a portrait.
What Sigismondo Tizio writes behind the scenes This marriage is less edifying:
Meanwhile, September 9, at nightfall, the alliance was sealed between long-sought Pandolfo and Piccolomini, by marriage, there were improper discussions on the amount of dowry. Pandolfo Borghese wanted to marry his son to the daughter of the late Andrea Piccolomini, Victoria ... When the dowry was received ... Borghese and his father came to know the girl that night. Although they had called the girl's mother, Agnes Farnese, did not show up, pretending to be sick. But when she realized that the dragon had crept into her house and in its richness, predicting that the worst had yet to arrive, she was a real fever because of inflamed spleen, and began to be seriously ill. The Moon was in Leo in conjuncture with Mars, and so on September 19, Pandolfo, on the advice of the astrologer, he sought the girl's brother Pierre, and ordered that she marry his son secretly agreed time.
On 23 September, when the girl was accompanied Victoria to hear Mass at the Cathedral and was ordered to head for home without Pandolfo wedding, it seemed that she had been abducted rather than brought to her husband ... Meanwhile, Agnes Farnese , wife of the late Andrea Piccolomini, exhausted with pain and sadness, as we reported earlier, died the morning October 8. She was buried the next day.
Borghese and Victoria took an apartment of seven rooms at the Palazzo Petrucci, the Palazzo del Magnifico, along with a dozen children of Petrucci. This neighborhood had its drawbacks. In 1510, as Tom reported with evident delight, he found his brother Alfonso Borghese Petrucci in a compromising position with their sister and beat the young blood. The Petrucci family, understandably, insisted that the two brothers were beaten because of a piece of armor, a breastplate forged by the blacksmith just talented Vannoccio Biringucci. In 1511, Alfonso had been framed with a cardinal's hat which cost about 16,000 ducats Pandolfo Petrucci in gifts to Pope Julius II, thanks to the intervention of course always present Agostino Chigi. In 1512 Pandolfo died of a stroke. Borghese took the place of his father's power, but was deposed in 1516 with a coup ee fled to Naples, where, according to Sigismondo Tizio, began to perform. Alfonso had no better fate, was accused of trying to poison the Florentine Pope Leo X in 1517, was imprisoned in Rome and strangled by a Moor with a scarlet rope, so as not to force a Christian to execute a cardinal.
The London show ended with a special room devoted to the painter Domenico Beccafumi, whose pastel colors and porcelain faces look a bit 'a Florentine mannerism but also a bit' maybe the ancient Roman painting. The shaded figures in the drawings Beccafumi exhibited in London may well have been taken from a Pompeian wall, and the painter had certainly seen examples of art of ancient Rome in his travels to the Eternal City. Sodom also shows remarkable affinity with the ancient paintings, foliage in the light of its beautiful landscapes and the short lines that draw some of his characters painted. As another Sienese original Fransceco di Giorgio Martini, Sodom worked with skill varies widely, even within the same framework, but at their best, these artists are the visionaries first class. With the new work on the Sienese artists and exhibitions such as London, is now much easier appreciate the distinctive features of the scene of Siena, whose grace able to mix old traditions and new ideas is really a legacy of values \u200b\u200bfor the whole world.
Note (*) Siena: Constructing the Renaissance City (Yale University Press, 2007). For the Sienese art of the period, cf. also Judith B. Steinhoff, Sienese Painting After the Black Death: Artistic Pluralism, Politics, and the New Art Market (Cambridge University Press, 2007)
Exhibition at the National Gallery, London, 24 October 2007-13 January 2008.
catalog of the exhibition, Luke Syson, Alessandro Angelini, Philippa Jackson, Fabrizio Nevola Piazzotta and Carol, with contributions by Hugo Chapman, Simon Nepi, Gabriele Fattorini, F. Xavier Salomon, and Jennifer Sliwka.
London: National Gallery, 372 pg. $ 65.00
[Original article by Ingrid D. Rowland]
