Siena, Archdiocese of

SIENA, Archdiocese of. - City and archdiocese, provincial capital in Tuscany. It has an area of 800 sq km with a population of 85,000 inhabitants, of whom 84,000 are Catholics, distributed in 110 parishes and 13 vicariates, served by 140 secular priests and 70 regulars; it has a major and a minor seminary, 11 male religious communities and 33 female ones (Ann. Pont. 1952, p. 379). The diocese, which suffered heavy reductions in the 15th and 16th centuries, extends in the form of an irregular rectangle, from north to south, mainly on the right bank of the Ombrone with its tributaries the Arbia, Merse, Lanzo and Gretano; it is crossed by the Via Cassia and the Via Grossetana. Its suffragans are the dioceses of Grosseto, Chiusi, Massa Marittima, Sovana and Pitigliano.

I. ORIGIN AND HISTORY

S. (Saena, Sena, Senae) has obscure origins. Probably an Etruscan center, it became around 30 B.C. an important Roman colony, but few ruins of it remain.

Christianity was introduced there, according to tradition, at the beginning of the 4th century through the work of the young Roman Ansano Anicio, martyred for the faith on the Arbia in 303 and who became the principal patron of the diocese. A monastery and a church of the martyr are documented in the 7th century (Lanzoni, p. 564). It seems almost certain that that Floriano who in 313 took part in the Council of Rome was bishop of S., but the history of the diocese for the first centuries is wrapped in darkness. After Floriano are remembered Eusebius, who participated in the Roman Synod of 465; Mauro at that of 649, and around that time he concluded a compromise with the bishop of Arezzo over the disputed possession of eighteen parish churches located in Sienese territory (cf. C. Lanzeri, La donazione del tribuno Zenobio, etc., Arezzo 1938, p. 12 ff.); Vitaliano who at the Roman Council of 680 subscribed the noted Letter to the Emperor of the East. The compromise over the disputed parish churches was not maintained, and long disputes with varying fortunes were repeated and even led to violence, as in the case of the translation to S. of the body of St. Ansano (1107), until the 12th century, without advantage for S., leaving a trail of animosity between the two dioceses. Meanwhile, a few kilometers from the city, the famous Benedictine monastery of S. Eugenio arose (730), and a few years later, at the extreme limit of the county, the even more famous abbey of S. Salvatore (v.) was erected. Religious life was putting down good roots. The authority of the bishop, already eminent alongside the Lombard gastalds, was strengthened with the Frankish counts.

With the disintegration of the Carolingian Empire the bishop remained the only uncontested authority. The imperial count returned to S. only with Otto I and was not to remain there long. Power had passed to the bishop, who exercised it with a council of noble consuls and by summoning the population before the church to approve the proposals. Alongside the political evolution, ecclesiastical life developed. Already from the beginning of the 10th century the Cathedral Chapter was bound to a common life with its Schola, of which the names of some masters, priores scholae, have been handed down. The Sienese Chapter still glories in the membership, albeit brief, of the learned St. Bruno of Segni in that school. The Sienese canons founded the hospital of S. Maria della Scala for sick and abandoned pilgrims, entrusting its care to a congregation of laymen, the Frati dello Spedale, but reserving to themselves the approval of the rector and oversight of the administration. Until the end of the 14th century the Chapter elected the bishop. At S. Pope Nicholas II was elected (1058) against the intruder Benedict X, a sign that it supported the new reform movement. Even before the conflict over investitures, the Sienese Church had obtained (around 1055) quasi-sovereign prerogatives over a broad territory between the Arbia and the Merse, which would have formed the fief of the bishopric, lasting, amid disputes and agreements, until Pietro Leopoldo (1786).

The great feudal lords took advantage of the political and religious disorder originating from the struggle between Papacy and Empire (when Gregory VII was confronting Henry IV, the Sienese Church was governed by the bishop St. Ridolfo [1072-84]) to expand their domains. But by now the movement for the unification of communal life could not be halted; and under the guidance of the bishop and the consuls the power of the great was being limited. Donations to the bishop and to the Virgin Mary, to the bishop and to the people, to the Virgin and to the Commune followed one another. The feudal lords were required to reside in the city. The new struggle between the Sienese pope Alexander III and Frederick I found as bishop of S. the active and zealous Ranieri (1129-67), to whom the precious calendar-obituary of the Sienese Church is owed (around 1140). When the consuls, pressed by the imperial vicar, imprisoned some ecclesiastics, the bishop excommunicated the consuls and placed the interdict on the city and the county. The clergy remained faithful to the Pope, but the bishop, forced to flee, could no longer return (d. 1170).

The consecration of the new Cathedral dates back to this time. Ghibelline S. obtained imperial recognition of the free cities (1186); free election of the consuls (which S. had been electing for several decades), the minting of coin, etc.; a recognition that was completed with the institution of the podestà (1199). Unfortunately the movement of communal unification was muddied by continuous wars between S. and Florence, wars that neither the pastoral zeal of the bishops Buono (1189-1215) and Buonfiglio (1216-52), nor the preaching of peace of the new Dominican, Franciscan, and Servite Orders were able to calm, until S. succeeded in defeating its Guelph rival (1260) and in dominating Tuscany for a decade, after having given itself a wise civil constitution (1262). The great Guelph merchants and bankers came to seize the government which they, the "Nine," held with wisdom and energy and without notable upheavals for a long period (1292-1355).

The legacy of the blessed Andrea Gallerani (around 1200-51), founder of the Casa di Misericordia (around 1240), was expanded with the Compagnia dei Disciplinati under the vaults of the Spedale (1295), which still continues something of the ancient charity under the name of Società di Esecutori di pie disposizioni; the blessed Bernardo Tolomei (1272-1348) founded in 1319 the Congregation of the Olivetans; the Carthusian monasteries of Maggiano and Pontignano arose; the Commune, not satisfied with having a great cathedral, planned a greater one, and the bishop Donusdeo (1313-51), deserving of the faith for the charity and firmness shown toward the Fraticelli, as his predecessor Buonfiglio (1216-52) had been deserving with regard to the Albigensians, blessed (1339) the first stone of the great Cathedral which, though unfinished, remains as a testimony of faith, daring and genius.

S. was filled with churches, convents, and hospitals, all enlivened by the grace of art. Three years after the deadly plague, the same bishop Donusdeo benefited with his testament (1351) 20 parishes, 34 convents, 2 abbeys, 13 hospitals. The county was in no way inferior to the center of the diocese in this competition of faith and charity. Yet, deeply agitated by murky passions, once the "Nine" had fallen the people consumed themselves in continuous internal and external struggles that brought the Republic to ruin (1555) with its incorporation into the Medicean Grand Duchy. During these two centuries the University of S. was elevated by Charles IV (1357) to a Studium generale with the faculty for the bishop to confer degrees; the work of the blessed Giovanni Colombini with his Gesuati arose; the ardor of St. Catherine was seen, the learned piety of the Ilicetani; that of St. Bernardino with his Observance; the stay in S. of Gregory XII, patron of the Studium to which he granted the chair of theology; the stay of Eugene IV, Gabriele Condulmer, formerly bishop of S. (1408); the unfinished ecumenical Council of 1423; the episcopate of Enea Silvio Piccolomini (1450-58), later Pius II, who elevated the see of S. to a metropolitan see on 23 April 1459; then that of Fr. Piccolomini (1460-1501), later Pius III; that of Fr. Bandini Piccolomini, energetic defender of the faith against the innovators (1529-88). And the faith remained firm in the Sienese church, despite the sporadic cases of defection culminating in the apostasy of B. Ochino.

After the fall of the republic, Siena became part of the Duchy of Tuscany. In the new political climate, the Tridentine norms inspired successful initiatives, directed especially by the Capuchins and the Jesuits, who came to Siena in 1536 and 1555 respectively. The episcopate of the learned archbishop A. Piccolomini (1588-97); of the most zealous Cardinal Fr. Tarugi (1597-1607), who held a provincial Synod (1599); of Cardinal M. Bichi (1612-14), founder of the Seminary; of A. Piccolomini (1628-71), who adapted prudent educational norms to the changed conditions, but also met with fierce resistance to the implementation of the canonical prescriptions on the part of two prominent lay congregations jealous of supposed rights, honored the Church of Siena. The Seminary, strengthened by the munificence of Alexander VII (1660), drew young men from every part of Tuscany, competing with the Tolomei College directed by the Jesuits; after the suppression (1774) the latter were succeeded by the Piarists.

The Jansenist controversies barely touched the diocese. But when Peter Leopold sought to implement, along with his economic reforms, ill-considered religious reforms, the archbishop P. Borghesi, deserving of praise, following the grand-ducal suppression of the lay confraternities and the reorganization of the city parishes (1783-86), firmly defended the rights of ecclesiastical doctrine and discipline. Pius VI, in exile, was a guest of Siena in February-May 1798. The religious Orders suppressed by the French (1808-1809) returned after the restoration. The Risorgimento period did not find the diocese unprepared for the new times, since worthy prelates such as the learned and generous archbishop G. Mancini (1824-55) governed it. The Seminary-

College continued the formation of young clerics and secular students, until the rise of this century, when the Seminary was separated from the College; and through the work of the archbishop P. Scaccia the Seminary obtained the faculty of conferring degrees in theology (1914-31). The University of Siena had suppressed theology in 1860.

II. ILLUSTRIOUS FIGURES

They honored their Church and their Sienese homeland: Rolando Bandinelli, distinguished jurist, later Alexander III (1159-81); Cardinal Riccardo Petroni (ca. 1250-1313), profound jurist and patron; the two Piccolomini popes; Camillo Borghese, of Sienese origin, later Paul V (1605-21); Fabio Chigi, man of letters and diplomat, Pope Alexander VII (1655-67); Ambrogio Caterino (Lancellotto Politi: 1487-1553), poet and theologian; Claudio Tolomei (1480?-1555), poet, philologist, politician, bishop of Corcyra (1549-1555); Sixtus of Siena (1520-69), converted from Judaism, most learned biblical exegete; Sallustio Bandini (1677-1760), archdeacon of the Cathedral, acute economist; Abbot Giovanni Caselli (1815-91), physicist, inventor of the pantelegraph; Msgr. Nazareno Orlandi (1872-1945), pioneer of Catholic Action, founder of the Federation of Associations of the Clergy in Italy (F.A.C.I.). The saints already mentioned are worthily crowned by Bl. Ambrogio Sansedoni (1220-82); Bl. Andrea Gallerani (ca. 1200-51); Bl. Francesco (d. 1328) and Bl. Antonio Patrizi (d. 1311); Bl. Giovacchino Piccolomini (1258-1305) and Bl. Caterina Lenzi, Nera Tolomei, Caterina Colombini, along with the others of whom every Sienese house takes pride in boasting.

III. NOTABLE MONUMENTS

Siena abounds in monuments.

Among these, the very first is the Cathedral, dedicated to the Assumption. Here from the 12th century a pleiad of artists has worked, creating in composed harmony masterpieces of every style. The Romanesque bell tower (13th cent.), the dome (1266), the pulpit by N. Pisano (1268), the facade by G. Pisano (1297) and Giovanni di Cecco (14th cent.), the graffito pavement on designs by Beccafumi, Matteo di Giovanni, etc.; the choir by Fr. del Tonghio and del Riccio; the high altar by Peruzzi; the tabernacle by the Vecchietta; the bronze and marble statues by Giovanni di Stefano, Francesco di Giorgio, Tino di Camaino, Donatello; the Piccolomini altar by Andrea Bregno (1503), with statues by Michelangelo; the chapel of S. Giovanni with the relic of the arm of the Baptist; the statue of the Baptist by Donatello; that of St. Catherine of Alexandria by Neroccio, and paintings by Pinturicchio; the chapel of the Vow where the archaic image of the Advocata Senensium is venerated, with the St. Jerome and the Magdalene by Bernini and a chiselled altar service by Cellini; the adjoining Piccolomini library with the Life of Pius II by Pinturicchio, to whom belongs the Coronation of Pius III on the inner wall of the Cathedral.

The Museo dell'Opera, adjoining the Cathedral, contains inestimable treasures: sculptures, statues (formerly in the Cathedral), the Three Graces, drawings, illuminated codices, goldsmith work, ivories, embroideries, reliquaries, vestments, together with the panel by Duccio, the Maestà (1309-11) made for the high altar of the Cathedral.

The Hospital of S. Maria della Scala opposite the Cathedral, a gigantic construction of two and six storeys (10th-14th cent.), encloses, with the masterpieces of art in the church, in the oratories beneath and in its interior, particularly in the Pellegrinaio (1440-43) by Domenico di Bartolo and the Vecchietta, the history of ten centuries of Christian charity. The parish church of S. Giovanni, built (14th cent.) beneath the presbytery of the Cathedral, has the baptismal font worked by Jacopo della Quercia, Donatello and Ghiberti.

The basilica of S. Domenico (1223 ff.), today the Basilica Cateriniana, boasts the chapel of the Volte with the portrait of St. Catherine by Andrea di Vanni and the chapel of St. Catherine with the head of the Saint and the frescoes by Sodoma, and a majestic crypt. The basilica of S. Francesco (1246 ff.), spacious and austere, with masterpieces by Ambrogio and Pietro Lorenzetti, damaged at various times and in the Second World War, is a destination of pilgrimages for the miracle of the Sacred Particles preserved intact since 1730. Adjacent to S. Francesco is the oratory of S. Bernardino with paintings by Beccafumi, Sodoma, Del Pacchia; with the heart of the Saint and the panel of the Name of Jesus designed by the Saint himself. The basilica of S. Maria dei Servi (ca. 1260), with its unfinished facade renewed (1534) and dedicated to the Immaculate Conception, was restored in the early years of this century, with paintings by Matteo di Giovanni, Taddeo di Bartolo, P. Lorenzetti and Fungai.

The church of S. Agostino (1258 ff.), remodelled at various times, spacious and luminous, has a triptych by Simone Martini, a Crucifixion by Perugino, the Slaughter of the Innocents by Matteo di Giovanni and the Epiphany by Sodoma. S. Maria del Carmine (13th-14th cent.), restored in this century, possesses an archaic Madonna dei Mantellini and the St. Michael by Beccafumi. The house of St. Catherine, transformed into oratories (1464 ff.), is a sanctuary to which the faithful flock from all over the world; it has works by Sodoma, Pacchia, Neroccio, Fungai, Riccio and mementoes of the Saint. S. Maria di Provenzano (1596 ff.) is a distinguished collegiate church, closely linked with the traditional Palio, very rich in precious furnishings; it is the only Baroque church in the city. S. Maria di Fontegiusta (15th cent.) is a singular cubic construction, with masterpieces by Marrina, Peruzzi, Fungai. The church of the Osservanza (basilica of S. Bernardino all'Osservanza, 15th cent.), destroyed in the Second World War and completely rebuilt, a short distance from the city, has the Coronation of the Madonna by A. della Robbia, the Reliquary of the habit of S. Bernardino by Fr. d'Antonio (1454); St. Elizabeth by Benvenuto di Giovanni; polyptychs by Sano di Pietro and by Sassetta. Among the sacred places, mention should also be made of the oratories of the historic 17 contrade, still intimately linked to the civil and religious life of the Sienese.

The innumerable pictorial and sculptural treasures, scattered through the churches of the territory of the diocese, have for the most part ended up in the city's Pinacoteca.

Venanzio Savelli

IV. SIENESE ART

The period of greatest splendor of Siena's artistic traditions falls between the middle of the 13th century and the first decades of the 16th, and corresponds roughly to the one that saw the establishment of the free Commune. Architecture reached its fullest development and its characters of genuine autonomy during the Gothic age: indeed, the few Romanesque buildings still preserved in the city reveal no accents of marked originality, such as the apse of S. Cristoforo, the church of S. Pietro alla Magione and that of S. Maria in Betlem, in which motifs of Lombard origin are reworked, not without a certain grace. It is, if anything, the countryside that gives us a notable series of Romanesque churches, among which stand out the collegiate church of S. Gimignano, the collegiate church of Asciano, the parish church of S. Quirico in Osenna in the Val d'Orcia and above all the famous abbey of S. Antimo at Castelnuovo dell'Abate, built in the 12th century by workshops probably monastic, trained in the manners of Burgundy.

In the following century, on the other hand, it is from the Sienese territory that the impulses toward a general renewal of religious architecture radiate throughout all Tuscany: the abbey church of S. Galgano in the Valley of the Merse, built between 1224 and 1288, today in ruins, was in fact among the very first testimonies of an Italian interpretation of transalpine Gothic and served as a model for a good part of Tuscan church building of the 13th and 14th centuries. Meanwhile, to the same Cistercian monks of S. Galgano, beginning in 1258, was entrusted the construction of Siena's greatest building enterprise: the Cathedral, dedicated to S. Maria Assunta. In its interior (completed ca. 1265-67) it reflects with great elegance and harmony of proportions forms of Romanesque-Gothic transition; in its exterior (facade begun by Giovanni Pisano in 1284 and completed, after a very long interruption, from 1376 onward in the extension of the choir (decided in 1317), in the underlying parish church of S. Giovanni (completed in 1325, with a facade probably designed in 1382) and above all in the grandiose remains of the so-called "Duomo nuovo," begun by Lando di Pietro in 1339 as the longitudinal body of a vast Cathedral of which the one already built was to constitute the transept (the construction was interrupted following the plague of 1348), it is a most daring expression of Tuscan Gothic, which at Siena is made graceful with admirable decorative motifs and acquires greater momentum than in the contemporary Florentine buildings. While other 14th-century churches of the city, and especially those of the monastic Orders such as S. Francesco, S. Domenico, the Carmine, even in the extreme simplicity of their forms denote the constant high level reached by religious building, no less importance is acquired at Siena by civil and private building, which has in every square and in every street conspicuous examples still perfectly preserved. From the 13th to the 14th century, Siena created its own characteristic appearance which still today constitutes one of its greatest attractions. The civil buildings present almost all, as recurring elements, the so-called "Sienese arch," consisting of a blind low-pitched arch surmounted by a ogee arch: and from the primitive "tower houses" and the gloomy buildings with sparse windows and stone-block facing one passes to the sumptuous palaces where stone is joined to brick, decorated with small arches, with serene flights of two-light and four-light windows with six-cusped arches and garlanded with battlements supported by slender inverted-pyramid brackets. The greatest expression of this elegant architectural style is the Palazzo Pubblico (1288-1342), with a facade of three slightly curved sections to follow the course of the admirable Piazza del Campo, and flanked by the slender Torre del Mangia (1338-48): numerous and splendid buildings take up its essential motifs, with infinite variety of particular solutions (Palazzo Sansedoni, Buonsignori, Tolomei, Marescotti, now Chigi-Saracini, Salimbeni, del Capitano, etc.). Typical, moreover, is the architecture of the Sienese fountains, consisting of ample basins in stone and brick covered by cross vaults (Fontebranda, Fonte Nuova, etc.) and of the city gates, of grandiose proportions, provided with outworks and girded with battlements (Porta Romana, Porta Pispini or S. Viene, Porta Tufi).

Gothic and Renaissance blend harmoniously in the Loggia della Mercanzia (by Sano di Matteo; 1417-1429) and in the Cappella di Piazza (1376) completed by Antonio Federighi, to whom are also owed the airy Logge del Papa and the original Palazzo dei Diavoli. Meanwhile, noted Florentine architects of the Quattrocento erect superb testimonies of the new style in the heart of this stronghold of the Gothic: Bernardo Rossellino, who for Pius II transformed the rustic village of Corsignano into a perfect model of a Renaissance small town, creating the present-day Pienza, raises at Siena the most noble mass of the Palazzo Piccolomini, imitated in the one called "delle Papesse," and Giuliano da Maiano begins the Palazzo Spannocchi which will serve as a model also for the so-called Palazzo di S. Galgano. Sparse are the direct traces of the activity in his homeland of the greatest Sienese architect of the Quattrocento, Francesco di Giorgio Martini; his style is nevertheless reflected in the work of Giacomo Cozzarelli (Church of the Osservanza, Dome of S. Spirito, Palazzo del Magnifico): also of Baldassarre Peruzzi there are not many memories in Siena (Palazzo Pollini, Castle of Belcaro), while other good Sienese architects of the 16th century were A. M. Lari, G. B. Pelori and Bartolomeo Neroni called "il Riccio." With the Seicento Sienese building activity, though not too intense, kept itself within the limits of a decorous and sober equilibrium, as demonstrates the harmonious mass of S. Maria di Provenzano, designed by the Carthusian fra D. Schifardini and executed by Flaminio del Turco. Of the 18th century are particularly characteristic the most elegant interiors of certain contrada oratories and the facades of the churches of S. Giorgio and S. Vigilio.

As with architecture, one cannot speak of a Sienese sculpture during the Romanesque period: indeed, only after the activity carried out at Siena by Nicola and by Giovanni Pisano did a local school of great importance form, and develop in the first decades of the Trecento, because it was represented by very notable masters such as Tino di Camaino, Gano di Fazio, Goro di Gregorio, Agostino di Giovanni, Agnolo di Ventura and Giovanni d'Agostino, while of Ramo di Paganello and Lorenzo Mainani, both active at Orvieto, no certain works are known in Siena. This splendid tradition, which suddenly ceased with the plague of 1348, revived in the early 15th century with the very great Jacopo della Quercia, with Francesco di Valdambrino and with Domenico dei Cori, the latter two being above all sculptors of wooden statues. Lorenzo Ghiberti and Donatello meanwhile introduced the new taste of the Renaissance at Siena by modeling, together with Jacopo della Quercia, the stories of the Baptismal Font of S. Giovanni: and if Antonio Federighi continued with a certain academic coldness the tradition of Jacopo della Quercia, of Donatello's lesson Lorenzo di Pietro called il Vecchietta and Francesco di Giorgio Martini made themselves lofty and original interpreters.

With the end of the fifteenth century, however, there spread a taste for a decorative sculpture of subtle and minute carving, rich in classicizing motifs, which was to culminate in the most elegant virtuoso works of Lorenzo di Mariano, known as "il Marrina" (1476-1534). In the sixteenth century there are no other notable figures of sculptors, except for Beccafumi, who, besides painting, practiced bronze casting with success; and in the Baroque period the numerous members of the Mazzuoli family, from the elder Dionisio to his sons Giuseppe and Giov. Antonio and down to his grandson Bartolomeo, carried on an intense activity, spreading the Berninian style. Finally, the very famous Giovanni Duprè was born in Siena (1817) and left several works there. But the greatest glory of Siena is that of having been the seat of a school of painting that was, especially during the fourteenth century, one of the most important in Europe. The fanciful and fairy-tale character of Sienese painting, which seems almost to oppose the lucid rationalism of Florentine painting, is seen above all in the constant predilection that the Sienese masters had for the element of color and for line understood as the pure and free expression of an exquisitely musical and decorative sensibility. Thus, to the robust and concise language of Giotto we see opposed the slender and flowery linear elegance of a Simone Martini, and to the volumetric chiaroscuro and constructive approach of the Florentines, the quiet chromatic expanses of an Ambrogio Lorenzetti.

Since ample information on the activity of each individual master is given in the entries relating to them, it will suffice to cite their names according to the chronological and stylistic connection that belongs to them. Thus, if the Sienese pictorial tradition begins around the middle (according to some, however, in the first decades) of the thirteenth century with Guido da Siena, it has its highest and most splendid outcome between the end of the thirteenth century and the first half of the fourteenth century with Duccio di Buoninsegna, Simone Martini and the two brothers Pietro and Ambrogio Lorenzetti. In the orbit of each of these masters numerous minor personalities developed, yet still worthy of note: from Duccio indeed depend Segna di Bonaventura, his son Niccolò and Ugolino di Nerio, and from Simone Martini, Lippo Memmi, Jacopo di Mino del Pellicciaio, Naddo Ceccarelli, the delicate miniaturist Niccolò Tegliacci and Andrea Vanni. A position of his own is held by the mythical Barna, in whose frescoes of the collegiate church of S. Gimignano one catches, originally reworked, echoes of both Duccio and Martini. But most of the painters of the late fourteenth century took advantage of the Lorenzetti experience, although in them such influences generally combined in such varying measure with other motifs of different origin as to make a rigorous classification difficult. Thus, for example, the so-called "Master of Ovile" is designated by some with the exegetical appellation of Ugolino Lorenzetti because in his manner elements derived from both Ugolino di Nerio and Pietro Lorenzetti are fused. Likewise Lippo Vanni, Niccolò di Buonaccorso and Luca di Tommè drew, albeit with very different results, on the same Martinian and Lorenzetti sources, while in Bartolo di Fredi and Paolo di Giovanni Fei one even discerns very late recollections of Duccesque manners.

While the language of the first great masters of the century survived without substantial innovations until the first decades of the fifteenth century through the eclectic manner of the very prolific Taddeo di Bartolo and Martino di Bartolommeo and their followers, Stefano di Giovanni, known as il Sassetta, showed himself informed not only of the contemporary currents of international Gothic taste, but also of the first revolutionary novelties of the Florentine Renaissance. But these had little effect in Sassetta himself, an artist otherwise most exquisite, which Sano di Pietro and Giovanni di Paolo, who were, after him, the greatest Sienese painters of the fifteenth century, continued to develop, with an autonomy of language, the precious Gothic heritage. Not even with Domenico di Bartolo and with Pietro di Giovanni d'Ambrogio did the new Renaissance taste make inroads into Sienese figurative culture, which was to assimilate it much later through the mediation of Lorenzo di Pietro, known as il Vecchietta, of Francesco di Giorgio Martini and of Matteo di Giovanni. But still on the threshold of the sixteenth century a Neroccio di Bartolomeo could evoke the immaterial linearism of Simone Martini, that is, when Sienese painting, by then devoid of personalities of note, had assumed a character of graceful eclecticism, opening itself to the most varied contributions among which, of particular importance, was the Umbrian one. In the first half of the sixteenth century the personalities of Sodoma and Beccafumi dominate: the former, of Piedmontese origin, a follower of Leonardo and of Raphael, and the latter to be considered one of the creators and greatest exponents of early Tuscan Mannerism.

At the end of the sixteenth century a myriad of painters of modest worth worked in Siena (one of the best was Francesco Vanni, delicately in the manner of Barocci), until in the following century Rutilio Manetti emerges, who was one of the strongest interpreters of Italian Caravaggism. With him, substantially, the series of the great Sienese painters comes to an end, because neither the eighteenth century with its superficial Nasini, nor the nineteenth century, which although with Maccari, with Aldi, with Cassioli and with Franchi had a flourishing school of fresco painters, were such as to equal the glory of the more ancient centuries. In parallel with those greater arts, the so-called minor arts also had in Siena a very wide development and attained a level of perfection difficult to surpass: not only that, but also particular techniques established themselves in Siena before elsewhere, whether in the field of goldsmithing, which owes to Siena the invention of translucent enamels, or in the art of glassmaking, since the oldest and most precious example of a historiated stained-glass window of Italian manufacture is Sienese (the great "eye" of the choir of the Cathedral, of 1288), or in wood inlay, or in marble commesso, which has left in the pavement of the Cathedral a monument unique of its kind for vastness of dimensions and fantastic ingenuity; while in illumination the stylistic vicissitudes of painting were reflected in a minor key, but with exquisite refinement. Sienese art, except for architecture, is almost exclusively of sacred subject, even when it was not destined to endow and embellish churches: and the favorite theme of Sienese artists, in every age, was that of the Madonna, who, solemnly proclaimed patroness and advocate of the city on the eve of the battle of Montaperti (1260), was always the object of most fervent cult on the part of the people and of the rulers of the Republic. - See plates XXXIV-XXXVI.

Enzo Carli