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Effects of Good Government in the city

Ambrogio Lorenzetti1338 - 1339

Fondazione Musei Senesi

Fondazione Musei Senesi
Siena, Italy

The Sala della Pace (“Peace Room”) is covered with frescoes by Ambrogio Lorenzetti (1338-1339), commissioned by the council of the Nine and one of the most important secular cycles in the history of art, a true civil and political manifesto of Siena’s enlightened and ambitious government. The effects of good government are illustrated on the adjoining wall, which faces, and opposes, the Bad Government wall. It presents a plausible picture of Siena as an ideal and a real city at the same time, brightly colored, hard-working, full of people. The city gates are open, a sign that this is peacetime and there is no need to close them for defense. The flow of trade and traffic between the city and the countryside is free and constant.

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  • Title: Effects of Good Government in the city
  • Creator Lifespan: ca. 1285 - 1348
  • Creator Nationality: Italian
  • Creator Gender: male
  • Creator Death Place: Siena
  • Creator Birth Place: Siena
  • Date Created: 1338 - 1339
  • painter: Ambrogio Lorenzetti
  • collocation: Siena, Civic Museum and Mangia Tower, Province of Siena
  • Place Part Of: Province of Siena
  • Artist Biography: Ambrogio Lorenzetti, one of the protagonists of early fourteenth-century Sienese painting together with his brother Pietro, is responsible for a crucial development in Sienese art, moving from the tradition inherited from Duccio towards a Gothic style, incorporating the innovations in Florence introduced by Giotto and Arnolfo di Cambio. By now at the peak of his career, he was called to paint the frescoes of the Sala della Pace in Palazzo Pubblico, his undisputed masterpiece; this enterprise confirmed him as the leading artist in the city and the Sienese government’s ‘official painter.’ Like so much of the Sienese population, Ambrogio too seems to have fallen victim to the Black Plague of 1348.
  • Type: fresco
  • Rights: Comune di Siena; Fondazione Musei Senesi, Fondazione Musei Senesi
  • External Link: Fondazione Musei Senesi
Fondazione Musei Senesi

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