ancient cities

16 Allegory of Good Government
Ambrogio Lorenzetti’s fourteenth-century fresco, The Allegory of Good Government, at Palazzo Pubblico in Siena, Italy
top of three intersecting ridges. Their intersection
in a slightly depressed space would become
the bowl-like Piazza del Campo when the decision
was made in 1288 (work beginning in 1298)
to shape it along with the new town hall; the fanshaped
plan of the piazza was reinforced by the
brick paving (divided into nine triangular
wedges), which slopes down toward the town
hall. At the intersection of the two upper legs of
the Y, the Palazzo was a hinge between the city
center on the north side and the contado, or
countryside, on the south; a top floor loggia on
the south side looks out to the landscape below
and beyond. The prominent bell tower, which
rises vertiginously from the corner of the palazzo,
was begun in the same year as Lorenzetti’s frescoes.
The cathedral, perched nearby on the highest
point in town, had been effectively brought to
completion 30 years before the piazza project
was begun.
The frescoed allegories of Good and Bad
Government were painted in 1338–1339. While
the frescoes offer glimpses of what daily life
looked like in Siena, they more tellingly convey
the Sienese government’s sense of itself, its mission,
and its effects on town and country. As such
they can be read as a visual treatise on the proper
relationships of power, people, and environment
in fourteenth-century Italy.
Content
The allegories of Good and Bad Government are
found on the piano nobile (second floor) of the
Palazzo Pubblico. Located on the south side of the
building—that is, away from the Piazza del Campo
and toward the countryside—the Sala dei Nove is
accessed principally from the doorway on its east
wall, which gives onto the main gathering space of
the Palazzo, the Sala del Mappamondo. So called
because of the large globe and circular map of the
heavens that were displayed on the west wall,
the Sala del Mappamondo was the chamber where
the town council met and where its decisions were
ratified. On the wall opposite the door to the Sala
dei Nove Simone Martini had painted earlier in
the century a large fresco of the Maestà, the
Madonna and Child enthroned, surrounded by
saints and wrapped by an admonitory inscription
directing those in the room charged with governing
to embrace Wisdom. This image looked
toward the room with Lorenzetti’s fresco cycle
and provided a sacred corollary to his ostensibly
secular allegories.