Anniversaries I

While I was busy trying to do my level best in a position that was, it turned out, doomed from the start, I *was* sometimes traveling and enjoying myself.  I was taking photographs of the experiences for this blog. I was mentally composing blog entries. But I was not sparing much time for actually writing. 

So now that my horizons - and more importantly, my outlook - have measurably improved, I'm addressing my backlog. Here is the first installment on a what will be a group of three posts on our anniversary trips.

First, I highly recommend getting married at a time of the year when the whole world is not also going on vacation. 

It means that your anniversary jaunts are more affordable in places that are less crowded with tourists. 

Also, the weather is not extreme, so you (or I, a genetically challenged individual in very sunny and/or tropical locations) can actually enjoy being outside. 

For celebrating year nine of our marriage, we went to Siena, a town I have always loved but have never spent more than a day in, always accompanied by tour groups.Booking a nice B&B was really quite easy. Our train ride was a pleasant three hours. 

In the month of October, Siena was cool and crisp in her short shadows, warm in the sun, dry, and chilly in the evenings. She was also more or less devoid of tourists...this only poses one problem when visiting similar places in off-season: restaurants keep limited hours.  We solved this by finding a pizza place that served good beer and visiting it more than once, thereby befriending the management. We also sampled the local salsicceria at lunchtime and discovered finocchiona - which is loaded with fennel. Sorry there are no pictures of this, because we ate it.  All of it.

But onto the sites...

Siena has one of most beautiful duomos I've ever seen. 

In Italian parlance, 'duomo' technically means 'dome,' but it has come to also generically mean 'the principle church of the city.' I believe that this all started with the duomo of Santa Maria del Fiore in Florence, which has an extremely impressive dome.  

This Sienese cathedral, with its Gothic elements seen here on both the facade and the bell tower, is Saint Mary of the Assumption.

The interior is a breathtaking array of graphic splendor, with black and white marble layered on so many vertical elements. 

You can be awed by the spectacle above, but you cannot ignore the one below, on the floor.

These marble pavements date from the 1400s to the 1800s. They are all executed by Sienese artists. 

These images - almost entirely dependent upon Biblical source material - along with the chapels in the side aisles and alongside the apse, can compel you for hours.

Siena is historically known for its prowess in banking, its annual staging of the Palio (bareback horse-racing in the central city square) and for being a site of very important 14th century Italian painting. 

Enter the Palazzo Publico, the civic building that overlooks that central square (or 'campo'...which is actually not square in any way - it is actually more scallop shell-shaped).  

The clock tower and crenellated (the toothy tops of the facade of the main building) roof enabled Sienese citizens to keep a watchful eye out for approaching enemies during the early, mostly proto-Renaissance years that it needed to defend itself from neighboring invaders.

I personally like to visit the Palazzo Pubblico for its fresco cycle by an artist named Ambrogio Lorenzetti (1290-1348). There is a lot of religious art to admire in Italy, but it is also important to see the art commissioned for purely civic purposes.

Did I mention that anniversary trips during off-tourist season months can make your travel a little less populated with pesky tourists? Take note: there was no one in the room with me. This fresco cycle features prominently in any art history survey textbook you pick up, and I was deliciously alone with it.

And here is Lorenzetti's Good Government in the City fresco, with its tentative approach to suggesting depth of space, yielding attempts at geometric perspective which don't yet completely cohere. The artist depicts Siena itself, bustling with merchant and trade activity, with vendors situated under porticoes in the middle right zone, making and selling their wares.  Way beyond, in the upper right background, we can see construction workers building a roof. To the lower left, we see a wedding procession, with the bride in her traditional red dress, riding a fine white horse. 

I am especially keen to spend time looking carefully at the gathering of figures in the lower center of the image.

Women engaged in a Renaissance circle dance, keeping time to the rhythm provided by a tambourine player who is also singing.

The somewhat oddly dressed three figures who foreground this activity are wearing split-sleeved over-dresses, decorated in unusual patterns. The yellow-garbed dancer seems to be sporting caterpillars, reduced to wavy, stylized lines traveling in a diagonal direction.

The pattern on the blue dress appears to be a geometric design that is interpreted by one scholar as the simplified representation of egg cases for larvae.

The lavender dress more clearly depicts a dragonfly pattern. 

Taken together, the dress patterns depict the life cycle of a common insect. Positioned within the undulating, over-and-under dancing of the small group of women, the idea of cyclical growth and development could easily parallel that of Siena - under the auspices of good government. 

With unity of movement and purpose, the citizens of Siena can enjoy the fruits of good government.

Now, this cross-eyed devil would not be satisfied with such a state of affairs.

He occupies another fresco in the same room, depicting deadly sins, helpfully labeled in Gothic script. And yes, portions of these frescoes are missing.  The intonaco layer of fresco (the layer that holds the painted image) somehow detached from the wall - perhaps due to seismic activity or some man-made intervention. 

And here is Lorenzetti's vision of Justice, personified and enthroned. Citizens of Siena (would we have recognized them at the time? I'd like to think so) form a queue below. And below that, we see Lorenzetti's proud inscription telling you that he designed and painted it. 

The white-garbed figure of Peace lounges casually. Nothing to worry about here!

Another fresco from an adjoining room.  Would that the Siena Palio riders have such finery (for themselves AND the horses) - and at least a saddle! - for their summertime races.  And yet. they do not. Tradition going back to the mid-1600s dictates that the races be held just as they are.

In Siena's church of St. John the Baptist, I was fortunate to see Donatello's bronze relief depicting the Feast of Herod. In a savvy, continuous narrative collapsing three scenes into one, an executioner presents John the Baptist's head on platter, Herod recoils, and Salome dances at the other end of the table. This is considered to be an early relief work by the well-known sculptor, but in textbook after textbook, it is featured as an example of the artist's masterful use of perspective.

This was a church that an incredibly complex ceiling.  A large hand mirror was provided for visitors to spend less time craning their necks. 

At Siena's major art museum was a exhibition devoted to the work of Ambrogio Lorenzetti.  Because Giotto di Bondone gets so much air-time as the 'Father of the Italian Renaissance,' artists like Ambrogio typically sustain less attention outside of expert circles. So I was grateful to see a concentration of works by him alone.

A lot of standard devices of this era's approach to depicting this popular scene appear in this panel painting: Mary dressed in blue as the Queen of Heaven, sitting and reading a book of devotions (we can even see the illustrations on the open pages), the angel Gabriel kneeling to share the news. Their conversation is recorded for us; you have to look carefully at the change in texture of the gold surface to see the letters...which I believe are flipped, in Mary's case, so that they are legible only by the use of a mirror.  This way, her statement reads appropriately, directionally speaking. It comes from her to the angel. 

The rosy cheeked Madonna appears solid, fleshy and youthful.  Her hair forms a waving mass of tendrils that curl towards her veil. Her hands, folded over her upper torso, overlap convincingly. 

She is palpable. Formidable.

These developments signify the genesis of the Renaissance.  Humanistic values place emphasis on the mortal stars of a divine story.

However, also typical of the era is the manipulation of the panel's surface just around Mary's head. Stamped designs and letters into the layered, gessoed halo, executed before the gold leaf was applied turns this form into a shallow relief that projects from the otherwise flat surface of the panel. Artists like Ambrogio owned special stamping tools for creating these intricate designs.

The museum also featured a lovely room with choral manuscripts. 

Beautifully hand-wrought illuminations.

Some, admittedly outside of my knowledge of Biblical tales (not to mention - amusing!).  I feel this way every time I go to a dentist. I may or may not have said His name aloud, if it were not for having my mouth propped open.

Gorgeous room!

This image captivated me because of the portrayal of oncoming weather, which I thought was unusual.

This image prompts my memory of a similar one I'm about to take students to see in the Sistine Chapel, in just a couple of weeks. 

Yet another incredible, painted ceiling.

And a break for lunch, with Tuscan wine...

And some local manzo e fagioli. 

Throughout the city, you can see signage, if you're looking for it, that tells you which contrada you are in.  There are 17 contrade - or districts - represented by 17 different symbols or animals. During Siena's palio, each bareback rider in the race sports the colors of their contrada. One of my favorites is the caterpillar. I'm also partial to the porcupine. I like them the most because in no way do they suggest speed. Racers in the Sienese palio represent their respective contrade, each wearing the colors of their flag

We stepped into another church, and found one painting by a woman artist. 

Just one! And one in need of some cleaning/conservation, of course. But still....one is better than none.

After our lunch break and short visit to the nearby church, we revisited the museum. This place has 7 floors, so it took awhile to go through.

And with each lower floor, we went back further in time....to find, finally? Etruscan ruins and artifacts.

No great shock there. We were in Tuscany (named for the Etruscans), after all.

Many, many cinerary urns.

Some spookily lit.

Interesting to see that they were painted. On the sides, a battle scene seems to rage on while the deceased reclines on a kline, presumably at a banquet in the afterlife.

These things could be extraordinarily elaborate, if you were wealthy enough to commission one like this.

Or there is this...simply a temple-shaped urn.  

By the time we emerged from this enormous building in the early evening hours, we found ourselves walking the city at the close of twilight.  With a chill in the air (which we relished, of course), we strolled back to see it one more time:

No people! Happy anniversary to us.