Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Dark Times
By the 14th century, the smiling Sienese townsfolk of Ambrogio Lorenzetti's
Allegory of
Good Government
must have seemed like the figment of a fertile imagination. After a ma-
jor famine in 1329 was followed by a bank collapse, Siena's
comune
went into debt to
maintain roads, continue work on the
duomo
, help the needy and jump-start the local eco-
nomy. But just when it seemed set for a comeback, the plague devastated the city in 1348.
Three-quarters of Siena's population - including artists Pietro and Ambrogio Lorenzetti -
died, and virtually all economic and artistic activity ground to a halt. Another plague hit in
1374, killing 80,000 Sienese, and was swiftly followed by a famine. It was too much - the
city never entirely recovered.
Florence was also hit by the plague in 1348, and despite fervent public prayer rituals,
96,000 Florentines died in just seven months. Those who survived experienced a crisis of
faith, making Florence fertile territory for humanist ideals - not to mention macabre super-
stition, attempts to raise the dead, and a fascination with corpses that the likes of Leonardo
da Vinci would call 'science' and others 'morbid curiosity'.
At plague's end, a Florentine building boom ensued. Upstart merchants such as Cosimo I
de' Medici (Cosimo the Elder) and Palla Strozzi competed to put their stamp on a city that
needed to be reimagined after the horrors it had undergone.
