The movement of the Observance led by Bernardino of Siena found approval among the citizens of L'Aquila in 1438 with the arrival of this Franciscan saint. Alessandro De Riicis, a Franciscan friar, chronicles in his Cronica Aquilanorum the success of Bernardino in L'Aquila. Found in his chronicle is a poem which states that L'Aquila began to be known as a city with the Sienese's arrival in it. This study analyzes the role that the saint played in making the city of L'Aquila known in what De Riciis calls "the world". I will first argue the importance of the saint among the citizens of L'Aquila in 15th-century Italy; subsequently I will explore how Bernardino's preaching, especially on the role of Mary in the Passion, influences the preaching of his followers in L'Aquila, which in turn shapes the political and religious evolution at a decisive moment in the city's history. It also shows how widely Siena influenced other regions beyond her own borders.
The history of Sienese women from the end of the Quattrocento to the years following the surrender to Florence and Spain (roughly 1560-65) is still to be written. My contribution will shed light on the social as well as the economic and political roles played by women in these critical years and in this terrible period of war, famine, and social changes. Both upper and lower class women struggled to maintain their families as best they could and to keep them together during exile, civil war, and financial and political turmoil. Using a wide range of strategies, women took care of family properties and possessions, remained in the city or went into exile. Using mainly archival documentation, I will offer a new approach to a topic, which is, up to now, almost completely unknown. Comparisons with Florence and Venice will illustrate the particularities of the Sienese reality.
Histories of Sienese politics, art, and music often end in 1557, the year Siena was forcefully absorbed into the Florentine Grand Duchy. It might be said, however, that early-modern Siena provides a fascinating case study of how a population manages to maintain a distinct identity even after the loss of political independence. Although even the imaginative historian Judith Hook saw only a city of "a thousand empty ceremonies", those ceremonies were vital as a means of maintaining and promoting a distinct senesita. Music was an important element in this cultural program and the Sienese took care to strengthen long-standing institutions and to promote and expand those festive traditions in which music figured prominently. This chapter examines the role of musical rites and ritual within the most prominent sacred and devotional institutions in the city, including public churches, lay confraternities, and female monastic institutions. It investigates the various forms of music education available in the city, both institutional and private, and their importance for the formation of a class of both professionals and amateurs who could participate in the city's festive culture. Finally, it considers the significance of the Sienese academies in the city's self-representation. These institutions promoted the distinctly Sienese parlor games (in which music played an important role) and were the driving force behind the flowering of operatic performance in Siena during the late 17th and early 18th centuries.
Fourteenth-century Tuscany was among the most receptive regions for the expansion of the Carthusian order. Siena represented a unique case as it was the only city with three charterhouses within its territory, the only instance in the entire history of the order: Maggiano, Belriguardo, and Pontignano. This chapter sheds light on the impact that the Carthusians had on Siena's literary and religious culture. In particular, it reconsiders a lesser known religious figure Pietro Petroni (1311-1361), a Sienese Carthusian monk from Maggiano. Petroni's unorthodox visionary and prophetic activity leads to new insights on late-medieval Carthusian engagement in the world, on the one hand, and, on the other, to relevant aspects in the life and work of some of the most prominent religious and cultural figures of the time, including Boccaccio, Petrarch, Giovanni Colombini, and Catherine of Siena.
Between the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century, Siena was the subject of a renewed interest on the part of nationalist intellectuals who were influenced by the Florentine journals circulating at the time. Beginning with Corradini, Siena began to mythologize their civic virtues as an example on which to forge their national equivalents, first by the nationalist movement and later, in expanded form, in the Fascist era. However, in the background remained the challenges posed by modernization and the proper response to them, including even its repudiation. As a "daughter of the road", so termed by E. Sestan because of the city's location on the Via Francigena, Siena was at the time one of the stops on the Grand Tour of Italy and styled herself a sort of time capsule, zealously enclosed in her glorious past. It was in this period, following the late 16th-century refeudalization indicated by the myth of R. Romeo's Italia mille anni, that the city took on the task of rewriting the history of the "Gothic Queen" in order to convey her from the Renaissance to the Risorgimento in an unaltered form. To accomplish this, they even enlisted the House of Savoy who, donating their heraldic banners to those of the contrade of the Palio (the heritage of the medieval guilds), sought to connect a non-existent national past with a still unwritten present. Moreover, the attention being given to Sienese history was not unknown to Sismondi who was seeking an explanation of the system of tenant farming. My contribution intends to analyze the "making" of a cultural operation that functioned as the glue for a political, economic, and social project lasting more than a century, in which the history of medieval Siena was pivotal not only for how it was defined but for how it was intended to justify the choices made in the present. In certain ways, this procedure is similar to what the Fascist regime would later do to glorify and justify itself, according to G. Volpe. Through an analysis of the history of Siena, my essay will seek to highlight the disparity between reality and myth. In addition, it will analyze the coming to fruition of various initiatives, such as: the birth of the Art Institute, the Defense of Monuments, the school of Falsi d'Autore, the myth of the contrade and the Palio, and the International Exhibition of Sienese Art held in London. All succeeded in giving stability to a rural Siena confronted with the challenges of modernity, while legitimizing the historical past, revisited and altered according to the requirements of the "here and now".
The brothers Pietro and Ambrogio Lorenzetti (active c.1306-45 and c.1317-48, respectively), working in Siena in the first half of the Trecento, emerged from the circle of Duccio di Buoninsegna (active 1278-1318) to become true innovators in the history of Sienese painting. They dominated the city artistically and received the most important local commissions after the departure of their contemporary Simone Martini (active 1315-44) for Avignon, France in the mid-1330s. This essay will focus on the Marian altarpieces that the Lorenzetti painted for ecclesiastical and civic patrons in their native Siena. As Mary was considered the protector saint of the Sienese Republic, known as the Vetusta Civitas Virginis, "the Ancient city of the Virgin", there were a large number of altarpieces produced by leading artists dedicated specifically to her. While the grandest and most famous among these is certainly Duccio's Maesta, the Lorenzetti also created inventive single and multi-paneled works in various formats, both for the cathedral and for the urban religious orders, as well as for the Commune. An analysis of these pictures will provide a greater understanding of Siena's artistic heritage, patterns of art patronage, and particular devotion to the Virgin, while broadening our knowledge of the city's unique visual culture, focusing on the 14th century.
This chapter considers the many ways in which the life of Catherine Benincasa (1347-80) intersected with that of Siena. Using at its point of departure the phrase coined by historian Ernesto Sestan to characterize medieval Siena some 50 years ago-a "daughter of the streets"-this essay explores how Catherine too spent much of her life "in the streets". These were the streets of Siena, for sure, but also those of southern France, Tuscany, and Rome, in order to pursue her spiritual and political missions. Catherine's career thus embraced ever broadening circles. The following pages will take up that career, while focusing primarily on the various neighborhoods of Siena and its territory, where Catherine had greatest influence, along with the many individuals whose lives she touched.
A Companion to Late Medieval and Early Modern Siena presents chapters by prominent scholars on the powerful commune that birthed a pope, sheltered saints, built banking institutions that have thrived for nearly 1000 years, and nurtured vibrant communities of artists and intellectuals. This multi-disciplinary book, edited by Santa Casciani and Heather Richardson Hayton, redresses scholarly imbalances of the past by introducing early period Siena to a wider audience. Focusing mostly on the 12th to 16th centuries, each chapter explores how the Sienese crafted a distinctive civic identity that remains intact still. Modern readers will find Siena’s responses to plague, political factionalism, and aggression from powerful neighbours particularly relevant. Contributors are: Mario Ascheri, Saverio Luigi Battente, Elena Brizio, Santa Casciani, Konrad Eisenbichler, Bradley Franco, Fabrizio Nevola, Anna Peterson, Colleen Reardon, Sheri Shaneyfelt, Jane Tylus, Andrea Beth Wenz, Demetrio Yocum.
In the dedicatory letter to his astronomical compendium De la sfera del mondo (1540), addressed to the Sienese poet Laudomia Forteguerri, Alessandro Piccolomini mentions that he had heard that Laudomia had spent a warm afternoon that previous springtime sitting in a circle under a laurel tree in the garden of her villa just outside Siena discussing Dante's Paradiso with some of her women friends. Piccolomini's comment points to a very important aspect of Sienese cultural life in the mid- 16th century: the involvement of literate women in learned discussions of literature. In his other works Piccolomini tells us even more: some of these women were, in fact, accomplished poets in their own right, ready to compose not only love sonnets in the Petrarchan style that was all the rage at that time, but also poetry that was profoundly engaged with current political or religious matters. Not only this, but some of these women were also ready to engage in poetic exchanges (tenzoni) with male poets such as Piccolomini. My contribution to the volume will thus examine the various ways, and the extent to which 16th-century women contributed, with their own poetry, to Siena's literary, political, and religious culture.
This essay focuses on the ways in which the city of Siena built and defended its identity as a city-state, beginning in the 12th century. Specifically, it will analyze the continuous development of its strong urban identity and will examine primary written sources, as well as artistic representations, for instance: the Sienese Biccherne, Ambrogio Lorenzetti's frescoes of the Effects of Good and Bad Government, and the pancali found in the Loggia della Mercanzia. It will also study the period of the Battle of Montaperti (1260) and that of the Government of the Nove (1287-1355) as integral parts of a longer and significant historical process. Therefore, particular attention will be given to the problem of the Monti and to the organization of the Populus, dividing the analysis into three important statutory laws (Costituto) of 1262, 1310, and 1545.
Drawing on a combination of primary and secondary sources, this chapter will examine the nature and reach of reformed religious ideas in 16th-century Siena. Surveying the current state of the field in regard to the Reformation in Italy, it will then take a more focused look at the various media and communities in which these ideas were discussed and through which they spread. Specific points of interest will include the role of salons, confraternities, preaching, and learned societies such as the Accademia degli Intronati. Broadly, this chapter aims to shed light on the diversity and scope of religious beliefs that circulated in the ostensibly Catholic world of early-modern Siena.
This essay will focus on the significance of Montaperti in Sienese history. Siena's victory over Florence at Montaperti in 1260 marked an important moment of triumph for the Sienese over their great Tuscan rivals. Despite the fact that Siena's domination over Florence lasted less than a decade, this victory became central to Sienese civic identity over the course of the 15th century and remains important to Sienese identity and history to this day. Montaperti's significance can be attributed not just to the military victory but, more importantly, to the later story that attributed Siena's victory to its decision to place itself under the governorship of the Virgin Mary in a feudal gesture preceding the battle. This essay will examine the evolution of the written chronicles that describe the donation of the keys to the Virgin before Montaperti, all of which date to the late 14th and 15th centuries. This essay will argue that the significance of Montaperti for the Sienese is largely a product of the 15th century, and the story of the key donation is revealing not about the 13th-century city, but about the values, beliefs, and ideals of Renaissance Siena.
This chapter offers a longue duree history of Siena's urban development from the 14th century through to the early years of Medici domination (c.1300-1600). As is well known, Siena offers a precocious example of urban design legislation around the Piazza del Campo, which included paving, zoning rules, and rulings on the aesthetics of buildings facing onto the piazza. Such planning rules spread to encompass much of the city fabric through the 15th century, so that when the Medici took over the city, there is evidence of their surprise at the way urban improvement was enshrined as a core civic duty. While a focus of the chapter will look at urban planning legislation and its effects on the evolving architecture of the built fabric over nearly three centuries, it will also consider how public urban space was used. Here too, there are continuities in the ritual practices that activated and inscribed meaning on the squares and streets as well as religious and secular buildings and monuments. It will be shown then that, as Bernardino da Siena's commentary on Lorenzetti's famous frescoes show, the built city is integral to the social interactions of its citizens.
The aim of this chapter is to explore the methods and institutions dedicated to the wellbeing of the urban population before the outbreak of the Plague in 1348, at which point there was a shift in the hospital landscape. Although traditionally the studies on Sienese hospitals have focused on the Ospedale Santa Maria della Scala, this contribution will explore the network of hospitals and leper houses in the city of Siena, how they differed from one another, as well as the level of care the inhabitants could have expected during this period. It will also touch on historiographical debates regarding the concept of care and cure in a medieval context, and the degree of independence these institutions may have had from municipal and other authorities.
