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Siena Icon of the Common Good: Lorenzetti and Lonergan
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 February 2024
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Inside the Palazzo Pubblico, the dignified Town Hall of Siena, is Ambrogio Lorenzetti’s cycle of frescoes of the Allegories and the Effects of Good and Bad Government painted between 1337 and 1339. The frescoes were commissioned by the Council of the Nine, a régime which retained power in Siena until 1355, after having preserved its peace and prosperity for some sixty years. A wise old man symbolizes the Common Good while a patchwork of neat fields, tame boar and busy hoers suggests order and prosperity. Bad Government is a desolate place, razed to the ground by a diabolical tyrant, the Sienese wolf at his feet. Lorenzetti’s civic masterpiece, Siena’s icon of the Common Good, documents the Catholic social tradition which recent papal teachings reaffirm in their critique of both Marxism and laissez-faire capitalism. Lorenzetti’s frescoes are not only decorative and celebratory, but they are also didactic; for this was the primary object of all medieval painting. The frescoes, a distillation of Augustinian and Thomist thought, are designed for the eyes of Siena’s ruling 61ite, for few, outside of that charmed group, ever penetrated to the innermost rooms of the Palazzo Pubblico. It is clearly the Nine who are addressed by the words which appear above the head of Justice in the fresco: “Love Justice, you who rule the earth.” The frescoes state the obligations of the governor to the governed, rather than the obligations of the governed to the governing.
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- Copyright © 1994 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers
References
1 Nowhere in Europe were the visual arts so closely integrated with every aspect of social life as they were in Siena. The very chests in which government documents were stored were elaborately decorated.
2 The old man is dressed like a royal judge, with a sceptre, shield and crown. He is the Commune of Siena whose black and white garments reflect the colours of the city. Around his head are the letters CSCV, meaning Commune Senarum Civitas Virginis. He is the “Bene Cummune” or “Common Good” in all the ambiguity of the Italian term, both the “Good of the Commune” and “The Common Good” of all its citizens. On the shield there is a depiction of the Madonna and Child, the protectress of Siena after the battle of Montaperti.
3 Concord corresponds to the “civic friendship” which, according to Aristotle's Politics, is a precondition for civilization.
4 Hook, Judith, Siena. A City and its History (London, 1979)Google Scholar affirms, on the back cover of the Italian translation (Siena, 1988). that “The necessity of a synthesis of the sacred and the profane for the good of the community, the defence of traditional institutions and above all the conviction that human beings are capable of living together is in itself a work of art and the chief characteristic of Sienese civilization. The way the Sienese crested and maintained such values for centuries is the theme of this book.”
5 Peace, near the centre of the composition, is gently reclining and bearing an olive branch, while treading swords and shields beneath her feet. Peace is the most beautiful figure in the whole cycle, because of which the room is called Hall of Peace. The individualism, factionalism and lawlessness of the nobility in clan rivalry threatened the peace of Siena. The Council of the Nine countered these disruptive tendencies by encouraging a sense of civic, communal purpose, finding expression in peaceful manifestations. The Nine encouraged the corporate life of Siena through buildings like the new cathedral and Town Hall to fulfil specific religious and civic functions.
6 The best‐loved and most popular of Ambrogio Lorenzetti's paintings, both in his own life‐time and through succeeding centuries. has been his Madonna del Latte which was painted in about 1340 and hangs in the seminary of San Francesco. The warm relationship in this painting of the Virgin nursing the Christ‐child was subsequently used by Sienese mystics and preachers to symbolize the relationship between Christ and his people, or between the church and the devout. Christ is the Common Good of his people; the Holy Spirit of Christ is the life of his people, uniting his people in his love, wisdom and peace.
7 Doran, Robert M. and Crowe, Frederick E., eds, Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan: Topics in Education (Toronto 1993)Google Scholar. Sec chapter 2, “The Human Good as Object: Its Invariant Structure,” pp. 26–43.
8 Ibid., 33
9 Ibid.
10 Ibid., 34.
11 Ibid, 34–36
12 Ibid., 36–39.
13 Ibid, 37
14 Ibid., 37–38.