Frommer's Review
Siena's cathedral is a rich treasure house of Tuscan art. Despite being an overwhelmingly Gothic building, the Duomo has one eye-popping Romanesque holdover: its 1313 campanile with its mighty black-and-white banding. What draws the crowds these days, however, is a newly discovered cycle of 13th-century frescoes in the crypt by an unknown artist. The Duomo was built from around 1215 to 1263, involving Gothic master Nicola Pisano as architect at some point. His son, Giovanni, drew up the plans for the lower half of the facade, begun in 1285. Giovanni Pisano, along with his studio, also carved many of the statues decorating it (most of the originals are now in the Museo dell'Opera Metropolitana). The facade's upper half was added in the 14th century and is today decorated with gold-heavy, 19th-century Venetian mosaics.
The city was feeling its oats in 1339. Having defeated Florence 80 years earlier, Siena was by now its rival's equal as a middle-class-ruled republic. It began its most ambitious project yet: to turn the already huge Duomo into merely the transept of a new cathedral, one that would dwarf St. Peter's in Rome and trumpet Siena's political power, spiritual devotion, and artistic prowess. The city started the new nave off the Duomo's right transept but completed only the fabric of the walls when the Black Death hit in 1348, decimating the population and halting building plans forever. The half-finished walls remain -- a monument to Siena's ambition and one-time wealth.
You could wander inside the Duomo for hours, just staring at the flooring, a mosaic of 59 etched and inlaid marble panels (1372-1547). Some of the top artists working in Siena lent their talents, including Domenico di Bartolo, Matteo di Giovanni, Pinturicchio, and, especially, Beccafumi, who designed 35 scenes (1517-47) -- his original cartoons are in the Pinacoteca. The ones in the nave and aisles are usually uncovered, but the most precious ones under the apse and in the transepts are protected by cardboard flooring and uncovered from August 23 to October 3 in honor of the Palio (when admission to the cathedral is charged). The only floor panel usually visible in the Duomo's center, in the left transept, is Matteo di Giovanni's fantastic 1481 Massacre of the Innocents (a theme with which the painter was obsessed, leaving us disturbing paintings of it in the Palazzo Pubblico and Santa Maria dei Servi).
At the entrance to the right transept, the small octagonal Cappella Chigi was designed by Roman baroque master Gian Lorenzo Bernini in 1659. It houses the Madonna del Voto, a fragmentary late-13th-century painting by a follower of Guido da Siena. The work fulfilled a vow the Sienese made on the eve of the Montaperti battle that they would devote their city to the Madonna should they win the fight against Florence (they did). Five times since, in times of dire need, the Sienese have placed the keys to the city in front of the miraculous Madonna and prayed for deliverance, most recently in June 1944 during Nazi occupation. Two weeks later, the city was liberated. The St. Jerome and St. Mary Magdalene statues cradling their heads in the niches nearest the door are also by Bernini, who did the organ outside the chapel as well.
At the entry to the left transept is Nicola Pisano's masterpiece pulpit (1265-68), on which he was assisted by his son, Giovanni, and Arnolfo di Cambio. The elegantly Gothic panels depict, as do the Pisanos' other great pulpits in Pisa and Pistoia, the life of Christ in crowded, detailed turmoil, divided by figures in flowing robes. The columns are supported on the backs of lions with their prey and cubs, and the base of the central column is a seated congregation of philosophers and figures representing the liberal arts. In the left transept's far right corner is Tino di Camaino's tomb of Cardinal Petroni (1313), which set the new standard for tomb design in the 14th century.
Umbrian master Pinturicchio is the star in the Libreria Piccolomini, built in 1485 by Cardinal Francesco Piccolomini (later Pope Pius III -- for all of 18 days before he died in office) to house the library of his famous uncle, Pope Pius II. The marble entrance was carved by Marrina in 1497, above which Pinturicchio was commissioned to paint a large fresco of the Coronation of Pius III (1504). In the center of the room is a Roman copy of the Greek Praxiteles' Three Graces, which Pinturicchio, Raphael, and Canova studied as a model. Pinturicchio and assistants covered the ceiling and walls with 10 giant frescoes (1507) displaying Pinturicchio's rich colors, delicate modeling, limpid light, and fascination with mathematically precise, but somewhat cold, architectural space. The frescoes celebrate the life of Aeneas Silvio Piccolomini, better known as the humanist Pope Pius II. The next-to-last scene on the left wall records the act Siena most remembers the pope for, canonizing local girl Catherine as a saint in 1461.
Next door to the library's entrance is the Piccolomini Altar, designed by Andrea Bregno around 1480. The Madonna and Child above may be Jacopo della Quercia's earliest work (1397-1400). A young, squash-nosed Michelangelo carved the statuettes of Sts. Peter, Pius, Paul, and Gregory in the other niches here (1501-04).
Beneath the church is the latest artistic discovery in Siena, in a room widely referred to as the "crypt," although no bodies have been found buried here. More likely the subterranean room is an old entrance to the Romanesque church. What the 21st-century restoration workers scraped up was a cycle of frescoes painted between 1270 and 1275, shedding some light on the early development of the Sienese school. The crypt has only been viewable since 2004, and scholars have yet to attribute the cycle to a particular artist. Some have speculated it may be the work of Duccio, though he would have been exceedingly young at the time. What is more or less certain is that the style and composition, such as the way Christ's feet are oddly crossed on the crucifix, have been mirrored -- almost copied -- in the paintings in the church above. Though chipped and still a little rough around the edges, the vibrant blue, gold, and burgundy colors have been impressively preserved thanks to the lack of light and humidity in this part of the church since the 1300s, when the room was entirely interred.
Note: This information was accurate when it was published, but can change without
notice. Please be sure to confirm all rates and details directly with the companies in question before
planning your trip.
