Bernardino da Siena

“ There were alarms and excursions from the fuorusciti in the contado; there were conspiracies within Siena itself, especially one most formidable in 1456 to subject the Republic to King Alfonso of Naples (who had substituted an Aragonese dynasty for the House of Anjou in that kingdom) , in which certain families of the Monte de’ Nove—headed by Antonio Petrucci, Ghino di Pietro Bellanti and Marino Bargagli—were deeply{71} involved. But, all the while, great personalities are moving across the Sienese stage. ”

“ In a{304} room in the villa there is a Madonna and Child with St Catherine and San Bernardino—a lovely little picture by Matteo di Giovanni.
There is a typical inclosed Italian garden of romance, with its lemon-trees and pomegranates; but the chief charm of Belcaro is its noble view. Upon all sides, as we wander along its terraces and parapets, the mountains and the valleys of the Sienese dominion lie outstretched before us, Siena herself l’amorosa madre di dolcezza away to the east, the grove of ilex-trees at our feet. A trophy of canon balls records the great siege of the city. ”

“ Deprived of liberty and independence, without even the showy compensation of the presence of a Court, Siena became a kind of glorified provincial city. The energies of nobles and people alike manifested themselves in the numerous academies for which the Sienese were always famous, in the wild sports of the contrade, in the social and literary gatherings, veglie and trattenimenti, which became proverbial throughout Italy. ”

“ The people both of Siena and Perugia were highly impressible and emotional, quick to obey the promptings of their passion, whether it took the form of hatred or of love, of spiritual fervour or of carnal violence. Yielding at one moment to the preachings of S. Bernardino, at another to the persuasions of Grifonetto degli Baglioni, the Perugians won the character of being fiends or angels according to the temper of their leaders; while Siena might boast with equal right of having given birth to S. Catherine and nurtured Beccadelli. ”

“ The price of the royal assistance was that the Sienese should swear fidelity and obedience to him. This was done, and in May 1259, from Lucera, the King received the Commune under his protection. To a second embassy, praying him to take the imperial crown and to send a captain with an army into Tuscany, Manfred answered that he loved Siena above all the cities of Italy, and that he would shortly send to those parts such a captain of his own blood and so great a force of armed men with him “that he shall make the rough ways smooth, and rule that province in peace.” ”

“ There are several old Sienese paintings in the chapter-house beyond the sacristy, especially two of San Bernardino preaching in the Campo and in front of San Francesco. Above the choir there is a fine circular stained-glass window, representing the Death, Assumption, and Coronation of the Blessed Virgin, with the four Evangelists and four chief early patrons of Siena; it was executed by Giacomo di Castello in 1369, according to a document recently discovered in the Archivio dell’Opera del Duomo. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The Pope, however, demanded that all the nobles should be made eligible to all posts in the government; he told the Sienese envoys that, unless his request were granted, he would withhold the favours that he had intended to confer upon his native city. In spite of the intervention of the Duke of Milan, the Sienese remained obstinate, until the Pope threatened to go to Florence without passing through Siena. Then the Balìa yielded in part, and Pius came to the city in February 1459. ”

“ After having been frequently sent by the Pope to heal the factions of Guelfs and Ghibellines in many towns of Italy, at last in 1348, when the terrible Black Death was ravaging the peninsula, Bernardo assembled his monks, bade them leave the convent, going two and two to every town and city to tend the plague-stricken, and all to assemble once more in Siena, two days before the Feast of the Assumption, in the convent that he had founded outside the Porta Tufi. ”

“ The first three-quarters of the fifteenth century in the history of Siena are a medley of somewhat inglorious wars with incessant faction. We find Siena allied with Florence against King Ladislaus of Naples (the son of Charles of Durazzo) , then at war with Florence again, then allied with Pope Calixtus III. against the great condottiere Jacopo Piccinino, in a war more famous for the stern penalty that the Republic knew how to exact from a treacherous general than for any action in the field. ”

“ Poggibonsi, Colle di Val d’Elsa, Montalcino and Montepulciano—in which right was probably with Siena and might with Florence—were perpetual sources of contention, and the Sienese suffered severe defeats time after time. “Do not forget through eternity those that deny thee, that withdraw themselves from the homage they owe thee, that plot against thee and that bring shame to thee.” ”

“ BERNARDIN OF SIENA, ST (1380–1444) , Franciscan friar and preacher, was born of a noble family in 1380. His parents died in his childhood, and on the completion of his education he spent some years in the service of the sick in the hospitals, and thus caught the plague, of which he nearly died. In 1402 he entered the Franciscan order in the strict branch called Observant, of which he became one of the chief promoters (see Franciscans) . ”

“ In this Sala di Balìa—then called the Sala del Papa—there was a notable tragedy enacted in 1455, in the very year that the “Magistracy of the Fifteen of the Balìa” was first instituted—originally of fifteen citizens to superintend the prosecution of the war against Piccinino. The commander of the Sienese forces, Count Giberto da Correggio, was in secret treaty with the enemy, sent him supplies while Siena starved, and attempted to occupy Grosseto on his own account. ”

“ The prevailing note of Siena and the Sienese seems, as I have said, to be a soft and tranquil grace; yet this people had one of the stormiest and maddest of Italian histories. They were passionate in love and hate, vehement in their popular amusements, [Pg 38] almost frantic in their political conduct of affairs. The luxury, for which Dante blamed them, the levity De Comines noticed in their government found counter-poise in more than usual piety and fervour. S. Bernardino, the great preacher and peace-maker of the Middle Ages; S. Catherine, the worthiest of all women to be canonised ”

“ We see Benedict as a youth leaving his father’s house at Norcia to go to study humanities at Rome, his faithful nurse (who plays the same part in the original legend) riding with him on a donkey; and then, his leaving the Roman schools, “instructed with learned ignorance and furnished with unlearned wisdom” as Pope Gregory has it, because scandalised at the dissolute lives of his fellow-students. These two frescoes show that Bazzi had been impressed by Pinturicchio’s work at Siena; they recall Enea Silvio setting out from Genoa and the Congress of Mantua. ”

“ Pope Clement VII., who intended to marry Fabio Petrucci with the daughter of Galeotto de’ Medici, summoned Francesco to Rome and kept him there, while Fabio, in December 1523, entered Siena. Fabio was a youth of eighteen years of age, excessively handsome and winning in manners, most incompetent and more dissolute than even Borghese had been. The Sienese stood his mercenaries and his unsavoury amours for about nine months. On September 18th, 1524, there was a general rising against him, headed by Giovanni Martinozzi, Mario Bandini and Giovanni Battista Piccolomini. ”

“ Alfonso Piccolomini d’Aragona, Duke of Amalfi, a grand-nephew of Pius III., who was a persona gratissima with the people, was now appointed Captain-General of the forces of the Republic. Siena threw herself into the arms of the Caesarian Majesty of the Emperor and the Catholic Majesty of Spain, combined in the person of Charles V. The Emperor—to whom Siena was the key of Tuscany—sent a garrison of Spanish soldiers, with a series of vicars or governors, beginning with Don Lopez de Soria, who reformed the government again and readmitted the Noveschi, headed by Francesco Petrucci. ”

“ In the stormy years that followed the return of the Popes from Avignon and the consequent schism in the Church, Siena suffered greatly from the bands of mercenaries who appeared at intervals in the territory of the Republic, ravaging the country with great damage. In June 1384 the army of the Sienese, engaged in a war in the Papal States against the Prefetto di Vico and Hawkwood, was completely defeated, and the Riformatori compelled to purchase an ignominious peace. ”

“ Every kingdom divided against itself shall be brought to desolation, which he repeated three times, each time{130} raising his voice higher. And when the sermon was finished, they brought back the Madonna to the Duomo with all the People.” [71]
No less characteristic of Siena than her faction fights and her preachers of peace are the wild games that the Sienese played, the mad races that they ran and still run round the Campo. ”

“ And for my part I love it, because the Sienese are still so mediaeval at heart. And that is why there is no city in Italy more fitted to be illumined by the torch of the Middle Ages than Siena. For Siena, notwithstanding the fact that she bred some of the greatest Renaissance popes, was comparatively untouched by the wave of paganism which swept over Italy in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. She still has whole streets of Gothic palaces; her saints are still reverenced with the almost child-like simplicity of the Middle Ages ”

“ But other aids than supernatural were preparing. A number of Sienese gentlemen and artisans alike left the city and their business, staying in their villas or in the contado rather than see this hideous monument of servitude rising higher day by day. Two of these, Girolamo and Lelio Tolomei, died suddenly—men whispered Spanish poison. An extensive conspiracy was concocted—in Rome, Ferrara, and Venice—for the liberation of Siena. ”

“ This element of beauty, which brings the city into immediate relation with the country, is indeed not peculiar to Siena. We find it in Perugia, in Assisi, in Montepulciano, in nearly all the hill towns of Umbria and Tuscany. But their landscape is often tragic and austere, while this is always suave. City and country blend here in delightful amity. Neither yields that sense of aloofness which stirs melancholy. ”

“ While the pestilence raged most fiercely, Bernardo Tolomei and his white robed Olivetani came down from their cloistered retreat to tend the stricken people of their native city, and almost all, including Bernardo, died with them. In the following year the Sienese who survived gave themselves up to feasting and riotous living. They all behaved for a while like brothers and relations, says the chronicler; each one felt as though he had won back the world, and no one could settle down to doing anything. And for a long while Siena seemed uninhabited, per Siena non pareva che fusse persona. ”

“ With the imperialists ravening like hell-hounds in Rome and Florence in revolt against the Medici, Pope Clement soon had his hands too full of more deadly business to interfere with Siena. But the Sienese returned to their mad factions. Some of the fuorusciti under Giovanni Martinozzi harried the Valdichiana, and Francesco Petrucci made a temporary reappearance upon the scenes, threatening Massa. Within the city the Popolani, led by the Libertini, were attempting to keep down the Noveschi. ”

“ 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{110} 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. ”

“ Belcaro, superbly situated and thickly clothed round with a magnificent grove of rich, dark-green ilex-trees, was a strongly fortified place in the early days of the Republic, and in the fourteenth century it belonged to the Savini. At the beginning of 1377 it was much decayed, and Nanni di Ser Vanni Savini gave it to St Catherine, with the consent of the government, to be made into a convent of “religious women who shall continually pray for the city and inhabitants of Siena.” ”

“ It is the epoch in which most of Siena’s noblest buildings were reared, the epoch in which its three supreme painters—Duccio di Buoninsegna, Simone Martini, Ambrogio Lorenzetti—for a brief while raised the school of their native city to an equality with that of Florence. Trade flourished, the university prospered; the Republic remained Guelf, though it retained a certain Ghibelline element within its core that kept it from an aggressive policy, and led the more strenuous Florentines to a proverb touching their neighbour: La lupa puttaneggia, “the she-wolf plays the harlot.” ”