Frommer's Review
In the late 13th century, the city government moved from the Palazzo del Podestà across from the Collegiata to the brand-new Palazzo del Comune (or del Popolo). You can climb its Torre Grossa ("Big Tower"), finished in 1311, for one of the best tower-top views of the cityscape and rolling countryside in all Tuscany. Before the step workout, though, check out the worthy civic painting gallery on the palace's second floor.
The small museum was built around a large fresco in the Sala del Consiglio of the Maestà (1317) by the Sienese Lippo Memmi. Up the stairs is the Pinacoteca, but before entering it, duck through the door to the left to see perhaps San Gimignano's most famous frescoes. Painted in the 14th century by Memmo di Filippucio, they narrate a rather racy story of courtship and love in quite a departure from the usual religious themes of the era. The most oft-reproduced scenes are of a couple taking a bath together and then getting into bed for their wedding night.
The first work in the painting gallery across the hall is a Coppo di Marcovaldo Crucifix surrounded by Passion scenes, one of the true masterpieces of 13th-century Tuscan art. Benozzo Gozzoli's Madonna and Child with Saints (1466) has an almost surreal Deposition scene with a delicate landscape running the length of the predella. A 25-year-old Filippino Lippi painted the matching tondos of the Annunciation in 1482, and the huge early-16th-century Madonna in Glory with Sts. Gregory and Benedict with its wild Umbrian landscape is a late work by Pinturicchio. That psychedelic almond-shaped rainbow of cherub heads over which Mary is hovering was one of Pinturicchio's favorite painterly devices to symbolize virginity.
Two works here tell the stories of the city's most popular patron saints. Lorenzo di Niccoló Gerini did a passable job in 1402 on the Tabernacle of Santa Fina, built to house the teen saint's head and painted with scenes of the four most important miracles of her brief life. In the late 14th century, Taddeo di Bartolo painted the Life of St. Gimignano as an altarpiece for the Collegiata; the saint himself sits in the middle, holding in his lap the town he was constantly invoked to protect.
This city, you see, was founded by the Etruscans and originally called Castel di Selva. When Totila the Goth was rampaging through the area in the 6th century A.D., the town decided to pray -- no one is quite sure why -- to Gimignano, an obscure martyred bishop from the far-off city of Modena. The sanctified bishop came riding out of the clouds clad in golden armor, and the Goths took to their heels and left the city alone. The town gratefully changed its name and has kept St. Gimignano on call ever since against plagues and other natural disasters.
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