Siena

“ The vicinity of Siena is delightful to walk about in; there being a verdant outlook, a wide prospect of purple mountains, though no such level valley as the Val d' Arno; and the city stands so high that its towers and domes are seen more picturesquely from many points than those of Florence can be. Neither is the pedestrian so cruelly shut into narrow lanes, between high stone-walls, over which he cannot get a glimpse of landscape. ”

“ She had spent a fortnight at Siena, but Siena had depressed her, with its sombre streets, its dead palaces and she had yearned for Rome. But she had not found Rome yet that afternoon. And, though she felt tired, she felt above all things lonely, terribly lonely and useless in a great world, in a great town, a town in which one feels the greatness, uselessness and vast antiquity of things more perhaps than anywhere else. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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 Crees, knowing of Baroma’s order that Siena should be the first to perish of starvation, gazed at the slave first in awe, then in fear. The last of the Sienas was succored by the spirits.
But god-chosen though Siena deemed himself, he knew it was not by the spirits that he was fed in this time of [100] famine. At night in the dead stillness, when even no mourning of wolf came over the frozen wilderness, Siena lay in his brush tepee close and warm under his blanket. ”

“ On entering we are at once struck by the dazzling profusion of gold and colour, the splendid and opulent decorative effect of the whole. In the contract between “the most reverend Lord Cardinal of Siena” and “Messer Bernardino called Il Pinturicchio, painter of Perugia,” dated June 29th, 1502, “to paint a Library placed in the Duomo of Siena,” almost as much stress is laid upon the “gold, azure, ultramarine, enamel-blue, azure-greens and other pleasing colours” as upon the ten histories in which he has to paint “the life of the Holy Memory of Pope Pius.” ”

“ A snapping of twigs alarmed Siena and he whirled upon the defensive, but too late to save himself. A band of Indians pounced upon him and bore him to the ground. One wrestling heave Siena made, then he was overpowered and bound. Looking upward, he knew his captors, though he had never seen them before; they were the lifelong foes of his people, the fighting Crees.
A sturdy chief, bronze of face and sinister of eye, looked grimly down upon his captive. “Baroma makes Siena a slave.”
Siena and his tribe were dragged far southward to the land of the Crees. ”

“ Throughout the story of Siena we find the word Monte used to denote the faction or order that held sway, and this was the beginning of the Monte dei Nove, whose adherents were afterwards known as the Noveschi. The order that had previously held the supremacy is henceforth known as the Monte de’ Gentiluomini.
The Siena of this epoch of Guelf predominance is that luxurious city of the gente vana, the “vain folk,” that Dante knew, the city whose paths he trod in the early days of his exile. Senseless extravagance reigned side by side with hectic devotion and mystic enthusiasm. ”

“ THE RED PALACE, SIENA.}
The genius of old Siena, however, would make little of any stress of such distinctions; one representative of a far-off social platitude being about as much in order as another as he stands before the great loggia of the Casino di Nobili, the club of the best society. The nobility, which is very numerous and very rich, is still, says the apparently competent native I began by quoting, perfectly feudal and uplifted and separate. Morally and intellectually, behind the walls of its palaces, the fourteenth century, it’s thrilling to think, hasn’t ceased to hang on. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ The Romans, however,—and Siena had Roman characteristics,—always liked to build of brick, a taste that has made their ruins (now that the marble slabs are torn off) much less grand than they ought to have been. I am grateful to the old Sienese for having used stone so largely in their domestic architecture, and thereby rendered their city so grimly picturesque, with its black palaces frowning upon one another from arched windows, across narrow streets, to the height of six stories, like opposite ranks of tall men looking sternly into one another's eyes. ”

“ This part of Siena is rich in charitable institutions. On either side of the street is a great institute for the Deaf and Dumb, and in the refectory of an old convent of the Poor Clares (now the female side of the Institute) the Sisters of Charity show you a beautiful fresco of the Last Supper with scenes from the Passion above. It appears to be the work of some Sienese master of the latter part of the Quattrocento, who had, perhaps, seen Andrea del Castagno’s rendering of the same theme in Santa Appollonia at Florence. ”

“ The aspect of Siena is far more picturesque than that of any other town in Italy, so far as I know Italian towns; and yet, now that I have written it, I remember Perugia, and feel that the observation is a mistake. But at any rate Siena is remarkably picturesque, standing on such a site, on the verge and within the crater of an extinct volcano, and therefore being as uneven as the sea in a tempest; the streets so narrow, ascending between tall, ancient palaces, while the side streets rush headlong down, only to be threaded by sure-footed mules, such as climb Alpine heights ”

“ Two of the Angels are holding a scroll with a poem, thus blending painting and poetry together in the characteristic early Sienese way: “This blessed glorious Virgin pure, Daughter of her Son and Spouse and Mother—because the Eternal Father found her more humble than any other person, He giveth her here the crown of the Universe. Virgin Mother of the Eternal God, by whose holy hands thou art crowned, to thee be recommended the devout and faithful city of Siena, as it hopeth in thee; hail, full of grace.” The San Bernardino on the right is also by Sano. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The Balìa sent to assure the Duke that he was mistaken about Pandolfo, who was no tyrant but had always conducted himself as “a most modest citizen,” and to remind him that Siena was under the protection of France. “The master of the shop, who is the King of France,” quoth Cesare with pleasing frankness to Machiavelli, “would not be content that I should take Siena for myself, nor am I so daring that I should think of such a thing. That community should trust me; I want nothing of theirs, but only to drive away Pandolfo. ”

“ A GUIDE TO SIENA: HISTORY AND ART. By William Heywood and Lucy Olcott. Enrico Torrini, Siena, 1903. Certainly it never rains but it pours. Siena, so long without any adequate guide to her intensely interesting history and art, has suddenly broken out into quite a literature to herself. Scarcely has the controversy over the respective merits, or the reverse, of Professor Langton Douglas’s ‘History’ and Mr. Gardner’s ‘Story’ ceased to rouse our interest before a third guide appears in the field, which to our mind is infinitely the best of the three. ”

“ The Marchese took us to Siena for two days.
“September 29th.—We got up by candlelight at 5 a.m. and had a fresh drive in the phaeton to the station, whence we took train to the fascinating Etruscan city, whose very name is magic. The weather, as a matter of course, was splendid, and Siena dwells in my mind all tender brown-gold in a flood of sunshine. Small as the city is, and hard as we worked for those two days, we could only see a portion of its treasures. The result of my observation in the churches and picture galleries shows me that the art there, as regards painting, is very inferior ”

“ He lounged, however, contentedly enough through these bright, still days of a Tuscan April, drawing much entertainment from the high picturesqueness of the things about him. Siena, a few years since, was a flawless gift of the Middle Ages to the modern imagination. No other Italian city could have been more interesting to an observer fond of reconstructing obsolete manners. This was a taste of Bernard Longueville’s, who had a relish for serious literature, and at one time had made several lively excursions into mediaeval history. ”

“ There are no Spendthrift Clubs in Siena now, nor any gay Lanos like him Dante met in the Inferno. But there are still laughter and song loving Sienese who in their own simple fashion go through life gathering rosebuds while they may. It seemed to me a very pretty fashion when I saw them holiday-making on Sunday afternoon, peasants, priests, officers, townspeople, all out in their Sunday best, and when on the Via Cavour, near the Loggia, we met two wandering minstrels singing love-songs through the town. ”

“ More characteristic of Siena is Cecco’s contemporary; Folgore da San Gimignano, in his corona of fourteen sonnets addressed to the brigata nobile e cortese, a club of twelve extravagant young Sienese nobles. Month by month through the year he sets forth a round of pleasures of every kind, feasting and hunting, music and jousting (the latter, in spite of a reference to Camelot, of a very harmless, carpet-knight description) , dallying in pleasant places with lovely women. ”

“ Yet the life at Siena, serene and charming as it may have been for the pupil, was, if we may judge by his expressions in other connections, more or less a bore to the master. He liked to think of himself as an authority on the art of teaching, but he seems always to have regarded teaching as being, for himself, an interruption to the higher interests of his life. After a few weeks he was restless again, and begged permission of his pupil to go on alone to Rome. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But if the potent oppress the weak, harassing them with shames and harms, your prayers are not for these, nor for whoso deceives my city.”
Such being the ideal basis of Siena’s policy, we are now given a series of her victories. On the opposite wall, painted by Simone in 1328, is a mediaeval warrior, Guidoriccio, riding alone, fully armed save for the head, his baton of command in his hand, his steed gorgeously caparisoned. The face is an admirable piece of portraiture. Behind him lie the camp of the Sienese and the captured castle from which the banner of the Commune floats. ”

“ His mother, seeing the white men intended no evil, came out of her fright and complained bitterly to Siena of his liberality. She spoke of the menacing winter, of the [85] frozen streams, the snow-bound forest, the long night of hunger. Siena silenced her and waved the frightened braves and squaws back to their wigwams.
“Siena is young,” he said simply; “but he is chief here. If we starve—we starve.” ”