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Celebrating the Virgin Mary as both an object of religious affection and a focus of civic pride, artists of fourteenth-century Siena established for their city a vibrant tradition that continued into the early decades of the next century. Such celebratory portraits of the Virgin were also common in Siena's extensive subject territories, the contado. This richly illustrated book explores late medieval Sienese art--how it was created, commissioned, and understood by the citizens of Siena. Examining political, economic, and cultural relations between Siena and the contado, Diana Norman offers a new understanding of Marian art and its political function as an expression of civic ideology. Drawing on extensive unpublished archives, Norman reconstructs the circumstances surrounding the commission of Marian art in the three most prestigious locations of fourteenth-century Siena: the cathedral, the Palazzo Pubblico, and the hospital of Santa Maria della Scala. She analyzes similarly important commissions in the contado towns of Massa Marittima, Montalcino, and Montepulciano. Casting new light on such topics as the original site for the reliquary tomb of Saint Cerbone, patron saint of Massa Marittima, and the identity of the patrons of the Marian frescoes in the rural hermitage of San Leonardo al Lago, the author deepens our insight into the origins and meanings of Sienese art production of the late medieval period.
This beautifully illustrated book examines the history, culture, and spirituality of the Italian city of Siena. Through color photographs, maps, and reproductions of original manuscripts, Burckhardt invites the reader to walk the streets of a city whose history mirrors the development of Christianity in Europe.
Siena is often referred to as the 'City of the Virgin' and the 'City of the Palio'. The special devotion of the Sienese to the Virgin began in the thirteenth century and in times of danger the Sienese have regularly rededicated their city to the Madonna, who is also celebrated in the twice-yearly festival of the Palio. Siena, Civil Religion and the Sienese examines Sienese devotion to the Virgin from the medieval period until the present day. Exploring how the Palio has become the principal means of sustaining and celebrating Sienese culture, values and identity - including popular devotion to the Virgin - Parsons shows how this festival stands in continuity with the earlier civil religion of medieval and renaissance Siena. Drawing on insights from recent discussion of the role of civil religion in medieval and renaissance Italy, the USA and modern Britain, this book explores how civil religion sustains the Sienese sense of their history, identity and uniqueness through a variety of beliefs, rituals, ceremonies and symbols. Highly illustrated and including a full bibliography, this book breaks new ground in interpreting Sienese devotion to the Virgin and to the Palio in terms of 'civil religion'.
'Art in Renaissance Italy' sets the art of that time in its context, exploring why it was created and in particular looking at who commissioned the palaces and cathedrals, the paintings and the sculptures.
"Siena: City of Secrets" is a charming, intimate portrait of this most secretive of cities, often overlooked by travelers to Italy. Part cultural history and intellectual memoir, part travelogue and guide book, Tylus writes with a novelist s flair, taking the reader on a quest of discovery through the well- and not-so-well-travelled roads and alleys of the ancient city. Today, Siena can appear on the surface standoffish, a bit static, and very old-fashioned, especially when compared to its larger, flashier cousins Roma and Firenze. But first impressions wear away as we learn from Tylus that Siena was, over the long view, an innovator among the cities of Italy: the first to pave its streets and main plaza (1298), the first to publicly fund its university (1321), the first to employ the promissory note (1720), the first to ban automobile traffic from its city center (1965), and much else. We also hear about Siena s great artistic and architectural past, hidden behind centuries of over painting and rebuilding, and about its resident apocryphal and not-so-apocryphal Saints. And about the distinctive characters of its different neighborhoods ( contrade ), exemplified in the highly competitive horserace that takes place annually in the city and that serves as both a dividing and a uniting force for the Sienese. Throughout we are guided by the assuring voice of a seasoned scholar with a gift for spinning a good story and with an eye for the telling detail, whether we are traveling Siena s modern highways or digging through ancient Etruscan tombs; or shadowing the path walked by medieval pilgrims; or tracking the city s financial history from its beginnings as the once-great center for commerce in the sixteenth century to its near collapse in January 2013; or celebrating literary giants Dante and Calvino or giants of the arena, Siena s Series A soccer team. A useful and entertaining guide for students of Italian culture (Tylus has written discursive, reader-friendly endnotes and included a full bibliography in the back matter), the book will also appeal to the traveler and tourist (virtual or otherwise) interested in learning more about this ancient, mysterious, reclusive citydespite itself."
In Art as Politics in Late Medieval and Renaissance Siena, contributors explore the evolving relationship between image and politics in Siena from the time of the city-state's defeat of Florence at the Battle of Montaperti in 1260 to the end of the Sienese Republic in 1550. Engaging issues of the politicization of art in Sienese painting, sculpture, architecture, and urban design, the volume challenges the still-prevalent myth of Siena's cultural and artistic conservatism after the mid fourteenth century. Clearly establishing uniquely Sienese artistic agendas and vocabulary, these essays broaden our understanding of the intersection of art, politics, and religion in Siena by revisiting its medieval origins and exploring its continuing role in the Renaissance.
"O Eternal God, accept the sacrifice of my life for the Mystical Body of Thy Holy Church." Saint Catherine in Ecstasy. Mystic - Stigmatist - Incorrupt. Travel with us to Siena, and St. Dominic's Church where she went into ecstasy. Walk through her home where she was mystically married to Jesus; see the cross where she received the Stigmata.
A History of Siena provides a concise and up-to-date biography of the city, from its ancient and medieval development up to the present day, and makes Siena’s history, culture, and traditions accessible to anyone studying or visiting the city. Well informed by archival research and recent scholarship on medieval Siena and the Italian city-states, this book places Siena’s development in its larger context, both temporally and geographically. In the process, this book offers new interpretations of Siena’s artistic, political, and economic development, highlighting in particular the role of pilgrimage, banking, and class conflict. The second half of the book provides an important analysis of the historical development of Siena’s nobility, its unique system of neighborhood associations (contrade) and the race of the Palio, as well as an overview of the rise and fall of Siena’s troubled bank, the Monte dei Paschi. This book is accessible to undergraduates and tourists, while also offering plenty of new insights for graduate students and scholars of all periods of Sienese history.