The Story of Siena and San GimignanoGardner, Edmund G.
History
The Story of Siena and San Gimignano
Gardner, Edmund G.
Art -- Italy -- Siena; San Gimignano (Italy) -- History; Siena (Italy) -- History
High up to the left of this chapel is the tomb of Cardinal Riccardo
Petroni, a famous decretalist but a man of great charity (in spite of
Dante the two things are not quite incompatible) in the days of Boniface
VIII. It is probably by either Tino di Camaino or Gano, and is a good
example of these sepulchral monuments of the early Sienese school,
though here, as the monument is to a churchman, the religious ideal
prevails over the usually more secular style. In the left transept are
statues of the two Piccolomini Popes, Pius II. and Pius III., of whom
more presently. As far back as the middle of the sixteenth century, it
was supposed that the highly-revered wooden Crucifix, near the statue of
Pius III., was the one carried by the Sienese at Montaperti. The chapel
of St Ansanus, opposite that of the Blessed Sacrament, has an
altar-piece by Francesco Vanni, painted in 1596, representing the Saint
baptising the people of Siena, which is a decidedly favourable specimen
of the later Sienese school. The bronze relief on the pavement, the tomb
of a Bishop Giovanni Pecci, who died in 1426, is a signed work of
Donatello. The bas-reliefs let into the wall--representing the
Annunciation, the Nativity, the Procession and Adoration of the
Magi--date from the first half of the thirteenth century; they are
specially interesting here as, when compared with the great pulpit, they
illustrate the state of sculpture in Tuscany before the advent of
Niccolò Pisano, and enable us to realise what Niccolò effected.
The famous pulpit, by Niccolò and his pupils, was
[Illustration: INTERIOR OF THE DUOMO]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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