During the Renaissance in Italy, the past acquired a special relevance as humanist scholars and antiquarians looked back to the classical Roman past, which provided a privileged source of material for the revival of the arts and letters: humanism. This course, which combines lectures with field-study activities, will use the remarkable surroundings of Siena to examine the different meanings attached to the past in this city. This interdisciplinary course will show how language, society, art and politics came together in the search for classical origins, history and style but also in the survival of gothic aesthetic traditions.
Special attention will be given to the analysis of the iconography of classical figures such as Greek and Roman heroes and heroines (for instance Alexander the Great, Aristotle, Furius Camillus, Scipio the African, Cleopatra, Helen, and Lucrezia), portrayed on frescoes of public and private palaces and on Renaissance paintings for furniture (cassoni, spalliere, lettucci). Sculpture will be examined, focusing on great Sienese monuments (e.g. the Fonte Gaia by Jacopo della Quercia). The so-called “decorative arts” (marble and wood intarsia) will also be considered, and particular attention will be devoted to the pavement of the Siena Cathedral, made with local marble of different colors. The pavement will be carefully analyzed to better understand not only the different works but also the general framework, through the complex connections of stories, symbols, secular allegories, spiritual and religious motives. The extreme vitality and uninterrupted presence of classical authors will be examined through specific study of ancient, medieval and humanist sources.
Prerequisites:
None
Learning outcomes:
By the end of the course, students are able to:
Read symbols in the Sienese works of art and monuments;
Analyze, trough the meaning of these symbols, the history of Siena and her socio-political and religious context from Middle Age to Renaissance;
Understand the relevance of the classical (greek and roman) culture for the Sienese society’s identity between Middle Age and Renaissance;
Compare the difference of the work’s of art’s subjects between context of civic and private art patronage and understand its historical and socio-political reasons;
Recognize the main artistic evolutions in Tuscany, Siena in particular, until the “Renaissance explosion” as a reflection of the historical evolution of culture and society.
Develop skills to critically evaluate Medieval and Renaissance works and the their contextual backgrounds, in their historical, cultural and socio-political connotations.
Apply the method: to read a work of art and to recognize its historical, socio-political meaning not only to the Sienese contest but also to other contest.
Method of presentation:
Each week this course includes one two-hour in-class lecture, and one field-study activity outside the classroom around the city of Siena and other locations in Tuscany, guided by the professor. Lectures will include also Power Point projections, CD-Roms and other visual materials,, seminar discussions, student presentations and class discussions. Lectures and on-site visits are led by the professor but as the course progresses, a seminar-style presentation is included, whereby students are asked to present specific objects to the class as a whole. Lectures, PowerPoint projections, discussions, seminar format, and student presentations. Guided tours to palaces, museums and pertinent sites in Siena, Pienza, and San Gimignano.
Note: During field-studies students are kindly advised not to carry bulky backpacks or troublesome objects. Photography is usually allowed in parks and gardens but is in general forbidden in museums.
Required work and form of assessment:
Active class participation and class discussion (15%), written midterm exam in the form of essay-style answers (20%), 5-7 pages research paper in Italian + oral presentation of the paper to the class (35%), written final exam (30%).
content:
*(Please be aware that the sequence and therefore the objects of the content, particularly regarding field-studies, may vary and be modified depending on the season and availability of the different locations to be visited)
1. Origins: Medieval and Renaissance Urban Foundation Myths
During the Middle Ages and Renaissance, many legends concerning the mythical origins of Siena and its noble families were born. The foundation legends of Italian towns often traced their origins to a Trojan exile, escapees from the fire of Troy or Romans fleeing some dangerous threat. According to local tradition, for instance, Siena was founded by Aschius and Senius, Remus’ sons, after they ran away from Rome to escape the rage of their uncle Romulus. Before leaving Rome, the two brothers stole the Roman she-wolf statue from the temple of Apollo. That sculpture became the symbol of Siena as well as Rome. (Caciorgna, Guerrini, pp. 219-231)
Visit: She-wolves and the Strada Romana (S. Domenico, the iconography of Saint Catherine, Banchi di Sopra, Piazza Tolomei, Croce del Travaglio, Loggia della Mercanzia, “Strada Romana”). The visit will introduce students to the iconographic and mythological armature of the city.
2. Origins: Medieval and Renaissance Urban Foundation Myths
In the central nave of the Sienese Cathedral, a she-wolf breast-feeding two twins is represented on the pavement. This is the most emblematic symbol of the Sienese identity. The animal is placed in front of the Ficus Ruminalis, the tree near which the shepherd Faustulus found Romulus and Remus after they were abandoned along the Tiber River. The entire series of the cathedral pavement will be examined, starting from the entrance, the “purest temple of the Virgin Mary” (as the carved words near the main door say – the cathedral is devoted to the Virgin Mary), the scenes inspired by the Classical era (Sibyls, Hermes Trismegistos, the Greek philosophers Socrates and Crates), the episodes from Jewish history to the salvation by Jesus Christ. Christ is never pictured on the pavement but is continuously evoked, as the main focus of this pavement’s entire artistic and spiritual series (Caciorgna, pp. 139-168).
Visit: She-wolves (Sala delle Lupe, Piazza del Campo), “Strada Romana” and Loggia della Mercanzia - Federighi bench with ‘Uomini Famosi’), and the Duomo precinct (piazza Postierla, piazza Duomo, Duomo). A natural continuation of the previous visit, this will bring students into closer and more detailed contact with one of the most complex and richly layered architectural and artistic monuments of the city.
3. Origins and Buon Governo: Political Iconography in Sienese Art
During this class, the subject of the “Good Government” from the fourteenth century will be examined through examples from important artworks of the Sienese town hall: the Maestà by Simone Martini, frescoes by Ambrogio Lorenzetti in the Sala della Pace, and paintings by Taddeo di Bartolo in the “Anticappella” and by Domenico Beccafumi in the Sala del Concistoro. In particular, the subject of the Uomini Famosi (Famous Men) will be considered. This late fourteenth century subject, which entails armati (armed men) and togati (toga-wearing men) as leaders and politicians, is one of the most relevant of secular art (Catoni, Piccinni, pp. 268-282, Donato, pp. 113-138)
Visit: Siena, conclusion of the previous visit and Piazza del Campo.
4. Origins and Buon Governo: Political Iconography in Sienese Art
The Fonte Gaia by Jacopo della Quercia, as a relevant civic monument, is the center of an ideal itinerary that starts from the frescoes by Ambrogio Lorenzetti and Taddeo di Bartolo in the town hall, to the marble benches in the Loggia della Mercanzia. The fountain iconography actually shows the indispensable virtues of good government as well as the mythical origins of the town: the she-wolves and the statues of Rhea Silvia, mother of Romulus and Remus, and Acca Larentia, nurse of the two twins (Caciorgna. pp. 72-78; recommended reading: M. Caciorgna, Il naufragio felice. Studi di Filologia e Storia della Tradizione Classica nella cultura letteraria e figurativa senese. La Spezia: Agorà Edizioni, 2004, pp. 5-49)
Visit: Palazzo Pubblico. Continuing directly from the lecture, this visit allows students to enter into the direct dialogue between civic culture and politics in the painted halls of Siena’s government building
5. Origins and Buon Governo: Political Iconography in Central Italian Art
Even outside the city of Siena, within the territories of the ancient Republic but also in other cities, the themes of mythical origins and of Good and Bad government can also be traced in culture and the figurative arts. In the Palazzo Trinci at Foligno, Gentile da Fabriano and some of his assistants depicted with splendid detail such narratives as the legend of the foundation of Rome, the Uomini Famosi (Famous Men) of ancient Rome, and the “Liberal Arts.” The scenes are accompanied by tituli (inscriptions) in Latin, the Vulgate and French that help us to understand the complex iconographic program (Galassi, pp. 169-174).
Visit: San Gimignano.
6. Political Iconography in Florentine Art: From “Uomini Famosi” (Famous Men) to “Biografia dipinta” (Painted Biography)
In Italian art, three main threads can be identified in the representation of ancient history: 1) Uomini
Famosi (Famous Men): series of Roman or Greek heroes of antiquity. Usually represented in groups of three, like standing figures of saints, they are paradigmatic figures, exempla virtutis, which allude to virtues and, less often, to vices. 2) Scenes of ancient history: representative episodes from the climactic moments of action that, again, evoke virtue or other symbolic behavior. 3) Biografia Dipinta (Painted Biography): scenes from the life of a single character whose entire life is represented in its chronological sequence. The former two typologies are preferred by republican patrons, while painted biographies tend to be better suited to princely and oligarchic patronage. One the first ‘Biografia Dipinta’ in Siena is the cycle of frescos by Pinturicchio in the Libreria Piccolomini inside the cathedral where we can find the scenes of the Pope Pius II’s life (Syson, pp. 309-315; Caciorgna, pp. 191- 218, Caciorgna, pp. 242- 267).
Visit: Pienza (city of Pius) where Pius II borned (piazza Pio II, Palazzo Piccolomini, Duomo).
During the Renaissance, was renewed by the Pope’s project within the tradition of classical literary canons; Pienza is perhaps a unique context within which to consider such change.
7. Class content review and mid-term exam
8. All’antica Private Patronage in the Domestic Setting (Siena)
Continuing from the previous class, single figures from antiquity will be examined in greater detail. Scipione l’Africano is a good example to compare the difference between the civic and the private patronage; Heroines will also be described typologically: Ariadne represents the abandoned wife; Cleopatra, Sofonisba and Dido, the seductive woman; Camilla, the girl warrior; et cetera (Caciorgna, Guerrini, pp. 232- 241; Caciorgna, Guerrini, pp. 92-99);
Visit: Siena, Spedale di Santa Maria della Scala (Sala del Pellegrinaio, Santa Caterina della Notte, Jacopo della Quercia’s ‘Fonte Gaia’). Movement through pilgrimage and trade were a key feature of early modern life; the city’s historic hospital is a unique venue to consider cultural mobility and the transfer of ideas and images.
9. All’antica Private Patronage in the Domestic Setting (Siena)
In Siena and Florence due to its larger size, painted domestic objects such as cassoni, deschi da parto and spalliere were also widespread and produced by local Renaissance workshops and artists. Again, the themes are those of classical heroes and heroines from the ancient world, exempla virtutis, to be emulated or reviled by the spectator until seventeenth century.
We will identify additional figures from antiquity including Polissena, Antioco e Stratonice; Dido the heroine who was passionate and self-controlled at the same time; and Helen, the paragon of beauty (Pons, pp. 100-112, Caciorgna, Guerrini, pp. 61-71; Sanfilippo, pp. 283-297);
Visit: Siena, Oratorio and museum of Civetta, Piazza Tolomei, Castellare degli Ugurgeri, Palazzo Salimbeni. Siena’s real past was constantly evoked and altered for the purpose of an ever- changing present; this visit seeks to show an example of private patronage and how the “presence of the past” was particularly strong in the nineteenth, and into the twentieth centuries.
10. All’antica Private Patronage in the Domestic Setting (Florence)
The ‘palazzo del Magnifico’ in via dei Pellegrini in Siena is one of the most important example of private patronage in Siena. Pandolfo Petrucci tried in vain to establish a ‘signoria’ in Siena. For hi son’s wedding commissioned the decoration of the ‘camera bella’ with frescos painted by Pinturicchio, Luca Signorelli and Girolamo Genga with mythological and historical subjects as model for the bride’s and noun’s virtues (Jackson, pp. 298-307; Jackson, pp. 316-321)
Visit: Piazza Salimbeni (collection of the Banca Monte dei Paschi), Palazzo Spannocchi. The domestic environment, viewed both as a facade and a more intimate interior, saw the revival of ancient models and prototypes during the fifteenth century; this visit offers a chronologically ordered analysis of the development of that residential type. In the Bank collection some of the most important Sienese masterpiece.
11. The Gothic Revival of Siena in Modern Times
Between the nineteenth and early twentieth century in Siena, painters, architects and writers were inspired by the world of the Middle Ages and Early Renaissance. Palaces were restored, chapels decorated and furniture produced in an “ancient” style, so much as to actually create fakes – on the basis of the revived international interest in “primitive” painters – the artists of Siena’s greatest
tradition. The commercial stimulus to the local candy and confectionary industry even led to the definition of a refined, though peculiar “panforte style,” used to wrap the various typical products (Mazzoni, pp. 175-190; .
Visit: Palazzo del Magnifico (outside) and Chigi Saracini collection, one the most important private collection in the city.
12. Class content review, paper give in, oral presentation and final exam
Required readings:
Course-pack
Caciorgna, Marilena. “Giovanni Antonio Campano tra filologia e pittura. Dalle Vitae di Plutarco alla biografia dipinta di Pio II,” in Quaderni dell’Opera, Vol. II, No. 2 (1998), pp. 85-138.
Caciorgna, Marilena and Roberto Guerrini. Il Pavimento del Duomo di Siena: L’arte della tarsia marmorea dal XIV al XIX secolo. Fonti e simbologia. Cinisello Balsamo: Silvana Editoriale, 2004.
---. Imago Urbis. L’immagine di Roma nell’arte e nella cultura senese come identità storica e morale, in Roma & Siena. Raffaello, Caravaggio e i protagonisti di un legame antico. Siena, Spedale di Santa Maria della Scala, November 25, 2005 - March 5, 2006, Siena: Protagon Editori, 2005, pp. 99-118.
---. Exempla virtutis. Eroi, eroine ed episodi di storia antica nella tradizione iconografica di ascendenza romana, in Roma & Siena. Raffaello, Caravaggio e i protagonisti di un legame antico, Siena, Spedale di Santa Maria della Scala, November 25, 2005 - March 5, 2006, exhibition catalog, Siena: Protagon Editori, 2005, pp. 157-167.
---. Virtù figurata. Eroi ed eroine dell’antichità nell’arte senese tra Medioevo e Rinascimento. Siena: Protagon Editori, 2006, second edition.
Donato, Maria Monica. “Il pittore del Buon Governo: le opere “politiche” di Ambrogio in Palazzo Pubblico,” in Pietro e Ambrogio Lorenzetti Ed. Chiara Frugoni. Firenze: Le Lettere, 2002, pp. 201-255.
Filippini, Cecilia. “Tematiche e soggetti rappresentati si forzieri, spalliere e deschi da parto,” in Maestri e botteghe. Pittura a Firenze alla fine del Quattrocento, exhibition catalog, Firenze, October 16, 1992 – January 10, 1993, Ed. Mina Gregori, Antonio Paolucci, and Cristina Acidini Luchinat, pp. 232-237.
Galassi, Cristina, Piero Lai and Luigi Sensi. Palazzo Trinci. Foligno: Assessorato alla Cultura, 1998.
Guerrini, Roberto. “Dal testo all’immagine. La «pittura di storia» nel Rinascimento,” in Memoria dell’antico nell’arte italiana by Salvatore Settis, Vol. II, I generi e i temi ritrovati. Torino: Einaudi, 1985, pp. 43-93.
Mazzoni, Gianni. La cultura del falso, in Falsi d’autore. Icilio Federico Joni e la cultura del falso tra Otto e Novecento. Exhibition catalog, Siena, June 18 –October 3, 2004. Ed. Gianni Mazzoni. Siena: Protagon Editori, 2004, pp. 59-79.
Panofsky, Erwin. Studi di iconologia. I temi umanistici nell’arte del Rinascimento. Torino: Einaudi, 1975 (fourth edition), pp. 1-38 (Introduction).
Pons, Nicoletta. “Il ‘tempio in casa’: immagini, allegorie, mobili “storiati.” Arredi domestici e oggetti di devozione privata,” in Maestri e botteghe. Pittura a Firenze alla fine del Quattrocento, exhibition catalog, Firenze, October 16 –January 10, 1993. Ed. Mina Gregori, Antonio Paolucci and Cristina Acidini Luchinat, pp. 219-231.
Recommended readings:
Benazzi, Giordana and Francesco Federico Mancini (eds.). Il palazzo Trinci di Foligno. Perugia: Quattroemme, 2001, pp. 375-400.
Caciorgna, Marilena. Il naufragio felice. Studi di Filologia e Storia della Tradizione Classica nella cultura letteraria e figurativa senese. La Spezia: Agorà Edizioni, 2004.
---. “Mortalis aemulor arte deos. Umanisti e arti figurative a Siena tra Pio II e Pio III,” in Pio II e la arti. La riscoperta dell’antico da Federighi a Michelangelo. Ed. Alessandro Angelini and Cinisello Balsamo. Milano: Silvana Editoriale, 2005, pp. 151-179.
Guerrini, Roberto. “Dai cicli di Uomini Famosi alla Biografia dipinta. Traduzioni latine delle Vite di Plutarco ed iconografia degli eroi nella pittura murale del Rinascimento,” in Fontes, Vol. 1, No. 1-2 (1998), pp. 137-58.
---. “Dulci pro libertate. Taddeo di Bartolo: il ciclo di eroi antichi nel Palazzo Pubblico di Siena (1413-14). Tradizione classica ed iconografia politica,” in Rivista Storica Italiana, Vol. 112 (2000), brochure II, pp. 510-68.
---. “Biografia dipinta. Plutarco e l’arte del Rinascimento (1400-1550).” Edited by Roberto Guerrini, with
Marilena Caciorgna and Cecilia Filippini. La Spezia: Agorà, 2001, pp. 209-344.
Rossi, David. “L’invenzione dello spazio medievale,” in Falsi d’autore. Icilio Federico Joni e la cultura del falso tra Otto e Novecento, exhibition catalog, Siena, June 18 –October 3, 2004. Ed. Gianni Mazzoni. Siena: Protagon Editori, 2004, pp. 37-46.
Settis, Salvatore. “Continuità, distanza, conoscenza. Tre usi dell’antico,” in Memoria dell’antico nell’arte italiana by Salvatore Settis, Vol. III, Dalla tradizione all’archeologia, Torino: Einaudi, 1985, pp. 373-486.
Thornton, Peter. Interni del Rinascimento italiano 1400-1600. Milano: Leonardo, 1992.
Brief Biography of Instructor:
Maddalena Sanfilippo is a Research Fellow in Classical Philology at the Department of Classics of the Università degli Studi di Siena and Advisor of the Soprintendenza al Patrimonio Storico-Artistico delle Province di Siena e Grosseto. She received her Ph.D. from the Università degli Studi di Siena in 2005, with a research project on Semper coniunx Ulixis ero. Penelope nell’arte e nella letteratura dall’antichità all’età moderna. She has held felloswships at the University of Siena, at the Warburg Institute and Victooria and Albert Museum in London. Her research focus is on the iconology and history of the classical tradition in the Renaissance. She has collaborated to organize exhibitions, and published articles including Desponsa nostris cineribus. Le Troades di Seneca come fonte per l’Astianatte e la Polissena nella collezione della Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena, “Fontes”, 11-12, 2003, pp. 235-249 and with Roberto Guerrini, Ritratto e biografia. Arte e cultura dal Rinascimento al Barocco, edited by Roberto Guerrini, Maddalena Sanfilippo, Paolo Torriti, La Spezia, Agorà Edizioni, 2004.
During the Renaissance in Italy, the past acquired a special relevance as humanist scholars and antiquarians looked back to the classical Roman past, which provided a privileged source of material for the revival of the arts and letters: humanism. This course, which combines lectures with field-study activities, will use the remarkable surroundings of Siena to examine the different meanings attached to the past in this city. This interdisciplinary course will show how language, society, art and politics came together in the search for classical origins, history and style but also in the survival of gothic aesthetic traditions.
Special attention will be given to the analysis of the iconography of classical figures such as Greek and Roman heroes and heroines (for instance Alexander the Great, Aristotle, Furius Camillus, Scipio the African, Cleopatra, Helen, and Lucrezia), portrayed on frescoes of public and private palaces and on Renaissance paintings for furniture (cassoni, spalliere, lettucci). Sculpture will be examined, focusing on great Sienese monuments (e.g. the Fonte Gaia by Jacopo della Quercia). The so-called “decorative arts” (marble and wood intarsia) will also be considered, and particular attention will be devoted to the pavement of the Siena Cathedral, made with local marble of different colors. The pavement will be carefully analyzed to better understand not only the different works but also the general framework, through the complex connections of stories, symbols, secular allegories, spiritual and religious motives. The extreme vitality and uninterrupted presence of classical authors will be examined through specific study of ancient, medieval and humanist sources.
None
By the end of the course, students are able to:
Each week this course includes one two-hour in-class lecture, and one field-study activity outside the classroom around the city of Siena and other locations in Tuscany, guided by the professor. Lectures will include also Power Point projections, CD-Roms and other visual materials,, seminar discussions, student presentations and class discussions. Lectures and on-site visits are led by the professor but as the course progresses, a seminar-style presentation is included, whereby students are asked to present specific objects to the class as a whole. Lectures, PowerPoint projections, discussions, seminar format, and student presentations. Guided tours to palaces, museums and pertinent sites in Siena, Pienza, and San Gimignano.
Note: During field-studies students are kindly advised not to carry bulky backpacks or troublesome objects. Photography is usually allowed in parks and gardens but is in general forbidden in museums.
Active class participation and class discussion (15%), written midterm exam in the form of essay-style answers (20%), 5-7 pages research paper in Italian + oral presentation of the paper to the class (35%), written final exam (30%).
*(Please be aware that the sequence and therefore the objects of the content, particularly regarding field-studies, may vary and be modified depending on the season and availability of the different locations to be visited)
1. Origins: Medieval and Renaissance Urban Foundation Myths
During the Middle Ages and Renaissance, many legends concerning the mythical origins of Siena and its noble families were born. The foundation legends of Italian towns often traced their origins to a Trojan exile, escapees from the fire of Troy or Romans fleeing some dangerous threat. According to local tradition, for instance, Siena was founded by Aschius and Senius, Remus’ sons, after they ran away from Rome to escape the rage of their uncle Romulus. Before leaving Rome, the two brothers stole the Roman she-wolf statue from the temple of Apollo. That sculpture became the symbol of Siena as well as Rome. (Caciorgna, Guerrini, pp. 219-231)
Visit: She-wolves and the Strada Romana (S. Domenico, the iconography of Saint Catherine, Banchi di Sopra, Piazza Tolomei, Croce del Travaglio, Loggia della Mercanzia, “Strada Romana”). The visit will introduce students to the iconographic and mythological armature of the city.
2. Origins: Medieval and Renaissance Urban Foundation Myths
In the central nave of the Sienese Cathedral, a she-wolf breast-feeding two twins is represented on the pavement. This is the most emblematic symbol of the Sienese identity. The animal is placed in front of the Ficus Ruminalis, the tree near which the shepherd Faustulus found Romulus and Remus after they were abandoned along the Tiber River. The entire series of the cathedral pavement will be examined, starting from the entrance, the “purest temple of the Virgin Mary” (as the carved words near the main door say – the cathedral is devoted to the Virgin Mary), the scenes inspired by the Classical era (Sibyls, Hermes Trismegistos, the Greek philosophers Socrates and Crates), the episodes from Jewish history to the salvation by Jesus Christ. Christ is never pictured on the pavement but is continuously evoked, as the main focus of this pavement’s entire artistic and spiritual series (Caciorgna, pp. 139-168).
Visit: She-wolves (Sala delle Lupe, Piazza del Campo), “Strada Romana” and Loggia della Mercanzia - Federighi bench with ‘Uomini Famosi’), and the Duomo precinct (piazza Postierla, piazza Duomo, Duomo). A natural continuation of the previous visit, this will bring students into closer and more detailed contact with one of the most complex and richly layered architectural and artistic monuments of the city.
3. Origins and Buon Governo: Political Iconography in Sienese Art
During this class, the subject of the “Good Government” from the fourteenth century will be examined through examples from important artworks of the Sienese town hall: the Maestà by Simone Martini, frescoes by Ambrogio Lorenzetti in the Sala della Pace, and paintings by Taddeo di Bartolo in the “Anticappella” and by Domenico Beccafumi in the Sala del Concistoro. In particular, the subject of the Uomini Famosi (Famous Men) will be considered. This late fourteenth century subject, which entails armati (armed men) and togati (toga-wearing men) as leaders and politicians, is one of the most relevant of secular art (Catoni, Piccinni, pp. 268-282, Donato, pp. 113-138)
Visit: Siena, conclusion of the previous visit and Piazza del Campo.
4. Origins and Buon Governo: Political Iconography in Sienese Art
The Fonte Gaia by Jacopo della Quercia, as a relevant civic monument, is the center of an ideal itinerary that starts from the frescoes by Ambrogio Lorenzetti and Taddeo di Bartolo in the town hall, to the marble benches in the Loggia della Mercanzia. The fountain iconography actually shows the indispensable virtues of good government as well as the mythical origins of the town: the she-wolves and the statues of Rhea Silvia, mother of Romulus and Remus, and Acca Larentia, nurse of the two twins (Caciorgna. pp. 72-78; recommended reading: M. Caciorgna, Il naufragio felice. Studi di Filologia e Storia della Tradizione Classica nella cultura letteraria e figurativa senese. La Spezia: Agorà Edizioni, 2004, pp. 5-49)
Visit: Palazzo Pubblico. Continuing directly from the lecture, this visit allows students to enter into the direct dialogue between civic culture and politics in the painted halls of Siena’s government building
5. Origins and Buon Governo: Political Iconography in Central Italian Art
Even outside the city of Siena, within the territories of the ancient Republic but also in other cities, the themes of mythical origins and of Good and Bad government can also be traced in culture and the figurative arts. In the Palazzo Trinci at Foligno, Gentile da Fabriano and some of his assistants depicted with splendid detail such narratives as the legend of the foundation of Rome, the Uomini Famosi (Famous Men) of ancient Rome, and the “Liberal Arts.” The scenes are accompanied by tituli (inscriptions) in Latin, the Vulgate and French that help us to understand the complex iconographic program (Galassi, pp. 169-174).
Visit: San Gimignano.
6. Political Iconography in Florentine Art: From “Uomini Famosi” (Famous Men) to “Biografia dipinta” (Painted Biography)
In Italian art, three main threads can be identified in the representation of ancient history: 1) Uomini
Famosi (Famous Men): series of Roman or Greek heroes of antiquity. Usually represented in groups of three, like standing figures of saints, they are paradigmatic figures, exempla virtutis, which allude to virtues and, less often, to vices. 2) Scenes of ancient history: representative episodes from the climactic moments of action that, again, evoke virtue or other symbolic behavior. 3) Biografia Dipinta (Painted Biography): scenes from the life of a single character whose entire life is represented in its chronological sequence. The former two typologies are preferred by republican patrons, while painted biographies tend to be better suited to princely and oligarchic patronage. One the first ‘Biografia Dipinta’ in Siena is the cycle of frescos by Pinturicchio in the Libreria Piccolomini inside the cathedral where we can find the scenes of the Pope Pius II’s life (Syson, pp. 309-315; Caciorgna, pp. 191- 218, Caciorgna, pp. 242- 267).
Visit: Pienza (city of Pius) where Pius II borned (piazza Pio II, Palazzo Piccolomini, Duomo).
During the Renaissance, was renewed by the Pope’s project within the tradition of classical literary canons; Pienza is perhaps a unique context within which to consider such change.
7. Class content review and mid-term exam
8. All’antica Private Patronage in the Domestic Setting (Siena)
Continuing from the previous class, single figures from antiquity will be examined in greater detail. Scipione l’Africano is a good example to compare the difference between the civic and the private patronage; Heroines will also be described typologically: Ariadne represents the abandoned wife; Cleopatra, Sofonisba and Dido, the seductive woman; Camilla, the girl warrior; et cetera (Caciorgna, Guerrini, pp. 232- 241; Caciorgna, Guerrini, pp. 92-99);
Visit: Siena, Spedale di Santa Maria della Scala (Sala del Pellegrinaio, Santa Caterina della Notte, Jacopo della Quercia’s ‘Fonte Gaia’). Movement through pilgrimage and trade were a key feature of early modern life; the city’s historic hospital is a unique venue to consider cultural mobility and the transfer of ideas and images.
9. All’antica Private Patronage in the Domestic Setting (Siena)
In Siena and Florence due to its larger size, painted domestic objects such as cassoni, deschi da parto and spalliere were also widespread and produced by local Renaissance workshops and artists. Again, the themes are those of classical heroes and heroines from the ancient world, exempla virtutis, to be emulated or reviled by the spectator until seventeenth century.
We will identify additional figures from antiquity including Polissena, Antioco e Stratonice; Dido the heroine who was passionate and self-controlled at the same time; and Helen, the paragon of beauty (Pons, pp. 100-112, Caciorgna, Guerrini, pp. 61-71; Sanfilippo, pp. 283-297);
Visit: Siena, Oratorio and museum of Civetta, Piazza Tolomei, Castellare degli Ugurgeri, Palazzo Salimbeni. Siena’s real past was constantly evoked and altered for the purpose of an ever- changing present; this visit seeks to show an example of private patronage and how the “presence of the past” was particularly strong in the nineteenth, and into the twentieth centuries.
10. All’antica Private Patronage in the Domestic Setting (Florence)
The ‘palazzo del Magnifico’ in via dei Pellegrini in Siena is one of the most important example of private patronage in Siena. Pandolfo Petrucci tried in vain to establish a ‘signoria’ in Siena. For hi son’s wedding commissioned the decoration of the ‘camera bella’ with frescos painted by Pinturicchio, Luca Signorelli and Girolamo Genga with mythological and historical subjects as model for the bride’s and noun’s virtues (Jackson, pp. 298-307; Jackson, pp. 316-321)
Visit: Piazza Salimbeni (collection of the Banca Monte dei Paschi), Palazzo Spannocchi. The domestic environment, viewed both as a facade and a more intimate interior, saw the revival of ancient models and prototypes during the fifteenth century; this visit offers a chronologically ordered analysis of the development of that residential type. In the Bank collection some of the most important Sienese masterpiece.
11. The Gothic Revival of Siena in Modern Times
Between the nineteenth and early twentieth century in Siena, painters, architects and writers were inspired by the world of the Middle Ages and Early Renaissance. Palaces were restored, chapels decorated and furniture produced in an “ancient” style, so much as to actually create fakes – on the basis of the revived international interest in “primitive” painters – the artists of Siena’s greatest
tradition. The commercial stimulus to the local candy and confectionary industry even led to the definition of a refined, though peculiar “panforte style,” used to wrap the various typical products (Mazzoni, pp. 175-190; .
Visit: Palazzo del Magnifico (outside) and Chigi Saracini collection, one the most important private collection in the city.
12. Class content review, paper give in, oral presentation and final exam
Course-pack
Caciorgna, Marilena. “Giovanni Antonio Campano tra filologia e pittura. Dalle Vitae di Plutarco alla biografia dipinta di Pio II,” in Quaderni dell’Opera, Vol. II, No. 2 (1998), pp. 85-138.
Caciorgna, Marilena and Roberto Guerrini. Il Pavimento del Duomo di Siena: L’arte della tarsia marmorea dal XIV al XIX secolo. Fonti e simbologia. Cinisello Balsamo: Silvana Editoriale, 2004.
---. Imago Urbis. L’immagine di Roma nell’arte e nella cultura senese come identità storica e morale, in Roma & Siena. Raffaello, Caravaggio e i protagonisti di un legame antico. Siena, Spedale di Santa Maria della Scala, November 25, 2005 - March 5, 2006, Siena: Protagon Editori, 2005, pp. 99-118.
---. Exempla virtutis. Eroi, eroine ed episodi di storia antica nella tradizione iconografica di ascendenza romana, in Roma & Siena. Raffaello, Caravaggio e i protagonisti di un legame antico, Siena, Spedale di Santa Maria della Scala, November 25, 2005 - March 5, 2006, exhibition catalog, Siena: Protagon Editori, 2005, pp. 157-167.
---. Virtù figurata. Eroi ed eroine dell’antichità nell’arte senese tra Medioevo e Rinascimento. Siena: Protagon Editori, 2006, second edition.
Donato, Maria Monica. “Il pittore del Buon Governo: le opere “politiche” di Ambrogio in Palazzo Pubblico,” in Pietro e Ambrogio Lorenzetti Ed. Chiara Frugoni. Firenze: Le Lettere, 2002, pp. 201-255.
Filippini, Cecilia. “Tematiche e soggetti rappresentati si forzieri, spalliere e deschi da parto,” in Maestri e botteghe. Pittura a Firenze alla fine del Quattrocento, exhibition catalog, Firenze, October 16, 1992 – January 10, 1993, Ed. Mina Gregori, Antonio Paolucci, and Cristina Acidini Luchinat, pp. 232-237.
Galassi, Cristina, Piero Lai and Luigi Sensi. Palazzo Trinci. Foligno: Assessorato alla Cultura, 1998.
Guerrini, Roberto. “Dal testo all’immagine. La «pittura di storia» nel Rinascimento,” in Memoria dell’antico nell’arte italiana by Salvatore Settis, Vol. II, I generi e i temi ritrovati. Torino: Einaudi, 1985, pp. 43-93.
Mazzoni, Gianni. La cultura del falso, in Falsi d’autore. Icilio Federico Joni e la cultura del falso tra Otto e Novecento. Exhibition catalog, Siena, June 18 –October 3, 2004. Ed. Gianni Mazzoni. Siena: Protagon Editori, 2004, pp. 59-79.
Panofsky, Erwin. Studi di iconologia. I temi umanistici nell’arte del Rinascimento. Torino: Einaudi, 1975 (fourth edition), pp. 1-38 (Introduction).
Pons, Nicoletta. “Il ‘tempio in casa’: immagini, allegorie, mobili “storiati.” Arredi domestici e oggetti di devozione privata,” in Maestri e botteghe. Pittura a Firenze alla fine del Quattrocento, exhibition catalog, Firenze, October 16 –January 10, 1993. Ed. Mina Gregori, Antonio Paolucci and Cristina Acidini Luchinat, pp. 219-231.
Benazzi, Giordana and Francesco Federico Mancini (eds.). Il palazzo Trinci di Foligno. Perugia: Quattroemme, 2001, pp. 375-400.
Caciorgna, Marilena. Il naufragio felice. Studi di Filologia e Storia della Tradizione Classica nella cultura letteraria e figurativa senese. La Spezia: Agorà Edizioni, 2004.
---. “Mortalis aemulor arte deos. Umanisti e arti figurative a Siena tra Pio II e Pio III,” in Pio II e la arti. La riscoperta dell’antico da Federighi a Michelangelo. Ed. Alessandro Angelini and Cinisello Balsamo. Milano: Silvana Editoriale, 2005, pp. 151-179.
Guerrini, Roberto. “Dai cicli di Uomini Famosi alla Biografia dipinta. Traduzioni latine delle Vite di Plutarco ed iconografia degli eroi nella pittura murale del Rinascimento,” in Fontes, Vol. 1, No. 1-2 (1998), pp. 137-58.
---. “Dulci pro libertate. Taddeo di Bartolo: il ciclo di eroi antichi nel Palazzo Pubblico di Siena (1413-14). Tradizione classica ed iconografia politica,” in Rivista Storica Italiana, Vol. 112 (2000), brochure II, pp. 510-68.
---. “Biografia dipinta. Plutarco e l’arte del Rinascimento (1400-1550).” Edited by Roberto Guerrini, with
Marilena Caciorgna and Cecilia Filippini. La Spezia: Agorà, 2001, pp. 209-344.
Rossi, David. “L’invenzione dello spazio medievale,” in Falsi d’autore. Icilio Federico Joni e la cultura del falso tra Otto e Novecento, exhibition catalog, Siena, June 18 –October 3, 2004. Ed. Gianni Mazzoni. Siena: Protagon Editori, 2004, pp. 37-46.
Settis, Salvatore. “Continuità, distanza, conoscenza. Tre usi dell’antico,” in Memoria dell’antico nell’arte italiana by Salvatore Settis, Vol. III, Dalla tradizione all’archeologia, Torino: Einaudi, 1985, pp. 373-486.
Thornton, Peter. Interni del Rinascimento italiano 1400-1600. Milano: Leonardo, 1992.
Maddalena Sanfilippo is a Research Fellow in Classical Philology at the Department of Classics of the Università degli Studi di Siena and Advisor of the Soprintendenza al Patrimonio Storico-Artistico delle Province di Siena e Grosseto. She received her Ph.D. from the Università degli Studi di Siena in 2005, with a research project on Semper coniunx Ulixis ero. Penelope nell’arte e nella letteratura dall’antichità all’età moderna. She has held felloswships at the University of Siena, at the Warburg Institute and Victooria and Albert Museum in London. Her research focus is on the iconology and history of the classical tradition in the Renaissance. She has collaborated to organize exhibitions, and published articles including Desponsa nostris cineribus. Le Troades di Seneca come fonte per l’Astianatte e la Polissena nella collezione della Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena, “Fontes”, 11-12, 2003, pp. 235-249 and with Roberto Guerrini, Ritratto e biografia. Arte e cultura dal Rinascimento al Barocco, edited by Roberto Guerrini, Maddalena Sanfilippo, Paolo Torriti, La Spezia, Agorà Edizioni, 2004.