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Siena: The Life and Afterlife of a Medieval City

by Jane Stevenson

Fondo Oro:

To understand the gold-ground masterpieces we cherish at Fondo Oro, one must first understand the city that breathed life into them. Jane Stevenson’s Siena: The Life and Afterlife of a Medieval City is an evocative journey into the heart of a Republic that, for centuries, stood as the artistic and spiritual rival to Florence. For the lover of the Trecento, Siena is a sacred site. Stevenson masterfully captures how the city’s unique political pride and its devotion to the Virgin Mary manifested in a visual culture of unparalleled elegance and mysticism. By charting Siena's rise, its tragic encounter with the Black Death, and its remarkable preservation, this book provides the essential historical context for the works of Duccio, Simone Martini, and the Lorenzetti brothers. It is a celebratory and authoritative account of a city that remains, even today, the most perfect vessel of the medieval soul. We recommend it as required reading for anyone seeking to look beyond the gold leaf and into the history of a people who transformed a hilltop into a masterpiece.

Apollo, 2024, 432 pages, Hardcover, ISBN: 9781801101141

An authoritative, richly illustrated history, and affectionate celebration, of Siena, one of the best-loved and most-visited cities in Italy.

Occupying a hilltop site in the midst of a vast, undulating landscape, Siena is as much a magnet for contemporary tourism as Florence. However, its proud republican past presents an intriguing contrast with its Medici-dominated northern Tuscan rival, with which it tussled for local supremacy for much of the High Middle Ages. From the twelfth century, profiting from its advantageous position on a major pilgrim route, the Republic of Siena developed into a major European power and remained an important commercial, financial and artistic centre for four centuries.

Jane Stevenson charts the changing fortunes of a city that rose to an astonishingly productive cultural heyday in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, suffered a catastrophic late medieval decline in the aftermath of the Black Death, but transcended the loss of its wider political power to enjoy a prosperous civic afterlife. Siena today enjoys a cherished position as a uniquely well-preserved medieval city, crammed with world-class art and architecture, furnished with appealing and intriguing traditions, and set in a heavenly landscape.