Beyond the Palio: urbanism and ritual in Renaissance Siena
1. Introduction: Beyond the Palio: Urbanism and Ritual in Renaissance Siena: Philippa Jackson and Fabrizio Nevola. 2. 'Sotto uno Baldachino Trionfale': the Ritual Significance of the Painted Canopy in Simone Martini's Maesta: Diana Norman. 3. Enter the Emperor: Charles IV and Siena between Politics, Diplomacy and Ritual (1355 and 1368): Gerrit Schenk. 4. Altars on the Street: The Arte della Lana, the Carmelites and the Feast of Corpus Domini in Siena 1356-1456: Machtelt Israels. 5. Ritual Geography: Housing the Papal Court of Pius II Piccolomini in Siena (1459-60): Fabrizio Nevola. 6. Peace-making Rituals in Fifteenth-Century Siena: Christine Shaw. 7. Pomp or Piety? The Funeral of Pandolfo Petrucci: Philippa Jackson. 8. The Rise of the New Civic Ritual of the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin in 16th Century Siena: Mauro Mussolin.
New Documents for Sassetta and Sano di Pietro at the Porta Romana, Siena
The history of the Coronation of the Virgin fresco on the Porta Romana in Siena (Fig. 1) is well known and well documented. In 1416 the city council asked Taddeo di Bartolo to paint a representation of the Madonna on the gate, but he seems not to have embarked on the commission by the time of his death in 1422. New life was breathed into the enterprise in 1442, and in 1447 Sassetta began the work. By the time he died in 1450, he had executed the angel choirs in the vault and had completed the design for the rest of the composition. His place was taken in 1459 by Sano di Pietro, who finished the Coronation of the Virgin almost a decade later. Over subsequent centuries the fresco was much damaged by exposure to the elements and finally by allied bombing in 1944; it has been restored several times.' Only the angels in the vault are fairly well preserved, while the Coronation itself has almost disappeared. In the 1970s the much-damaged fresco was detached and placed on the inner facade of the church of S. Francesco. On that occasion the technique was studied closely: traces of spolvero were found in the angel choirs in the vault, while sinopie were exposed under the Coronation (Figs.2 and 6). The purpose of this article is to publish some new documents (see the Appendix below), which expand our knowledge of the genesis of the fresco and its makers and provide fascinating information about the early use of cartoons.
The Gospel and the land;: Early Christianity and Jewish territorial doctrine,
Ostensibly Davies' patient study of the concepton of the "land" (Israel, Jerusalem) in early Christianity is an essay in Biblical theology, but he also wishes to raise serious questions about Christian understanding (or misunderstanding) of Judaism. "Christians have usually understood Judaism in too theological, and therefore, too intellectual terms. And they have also looked at their own foundation document, the New Testament, in the same way. In their proper concern to unravel theological developments and subtleties in primitive Christianity, they have neglfected to search for evidences of an encounter between it and the realia of Judaism and for any possible resolutions of such an tencounter. In particular, they have failed to inquire after the place of the land in the thought and lives of early Christians" (p. 161). Davies observes, for example, that bible dictionaries often have no references whatsoever to "land" and those that do allot it but a few pages. Even in Old Testament scholarship, where the land is of central significance in the documents themselves, it has been neglected. His work is an attempt to provide a context of Jewish thinking from early Israelite writings up to the Talmud in which to place the Christian materials. The bulk of the book is an account of the historical and theological process by which early Christianity gave a "spiritual" interpretation of traditional Jewish views of the land. Read against the Jewish background, the radical spiritualizing of the tradition is striking. Yet Davies also shows that Jewish attitudes were not monolithic in the first century, that notions of a preexistent, heavenly or eschatological Jerusalem were present, and that some Jews considered the viability of Judaism apart from the land. At some point however what could be entertained as an abstraction in Judaism, when it was made concrete in the life of the Christian movement, could not be tolerated. The conflict was heightened, of course, by the destruction of Jerusalem and the continued existence of Christianity as a movement increasingly receptive to non-Jews. Christianity, however, while rejecting the link between the land and religion, did create a new sense of "holy space" by hallowing the places where Christ had been, a development which would find fullest expression some several centuries later. As a result of the Holocaust and the establishment of the modern state of Israel Christians are faced with a whole new series of issues which have lain dormant since the destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70. Davies' work must be read against this backdrop to appreciate its significance. It is as much a book about modern Christian thinking as it is about the past, as many of his citations and his several appendices of speeches at Jewish-Christian conferences show. To some it may appear that he has sided too closely with certain strands of Judaism and allowed this to color his way of handling the pre-Christian and pre-Rabbinic material, but such criticism is carping. Much of the material here is gathered together in this fashion for the first time, and he has successfully shown that a major preoccupation of ancient Judaism is missing in contemporary biblical scholarship. Further, he has given us a moving yet scholarly statement of the pathos of the modern Christian who cares about Christ and Israel and who tries to understand Israel while loving Christ.