Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
The Middle Ages: The Rise of the Comune
While communities sprang up around hermits and holy men in the hinterlands, cities took
on a life of their own from the 13th and 14th centuries. Roman road networks had been
serving as handy trade routes starting in the 11th century, and farming estates and villas
began to spring up outside major trading centres as a new middle class of merchants, farm-
ers and skilled craftspeople emerged. Taxes and donations sponsored the building of hospit-
als such as the Ospedale Santa Maria della Scala in Siena. Streets were paved, town walls
erected and sewage systems built to accommodate an increasingly sophisticated urban pop-
ulation not keen on sprawl or squalor.
Once townsfolk came into a bit of money, they weren't necessarily keen to part with it,
and didn't always agree how their tax dollars should be spent.
Comuni
(local governments)
were formed to represent the various interests of merchants, guilds and competing noble
families, and the first order of business on the agenda in major medieval cities, such as Si-
ena, Florence and Volterra, was the construction of an impressive town hall to reflect the
importance and authority of the
comune.
The greatest example is Siena's Palazzo Comun-
ale.
In addition to being savvy political lobbyists and fans of grand architectural projects that
kept their constituents gainfully employed, medieval
comuni
were masters of propaganda,
and fully understood the influence that art and architecture could wield. A perfect case in
point is Ambrogio Lorenzetti's
Allegories of Good and Bad Government
fresco series in Si-
ena's Palazzo Comunale, which is better and bigger than any political billboard could ever
be. In the
Allegory of Good Government,
Lorenzetti's grey-bearded figure of Legitimate
Authority is flanked by an entourage who'd certainly put White House interns to shame:
Peace, Fortitude, Prudence, Magnanimity, Temperance and Justice. Above them flit Faith,
Hope and Charity, and to the left Concord sits confidently on her throne while the reins of
justice are held taut overhead.
Next to this fresco is another depicting the effects of good government: townsfolk make
their way through town in an orderly fashion, pausing to do business, greet one another,
join hands and dance a merry jig. But things couldn't be more different in the
Allegory of
Bad Government,
where horned and fanged Tyrannia rules over a scene of chaos surroun-
ded by winged vices, and Justice lies unconscious, her scales shattered. Like the best cam-
paign speeches, this cautionary tale was brilliantly rendered, but not always heeded.
