beautiful Madonna of the school of Beccafumi. Then come four pictures of the heroic last days of the Republic, all four ascribed to Giorgio di Giovanni; for both Biccherna and Gabella of 1552, the destruction of the Citadel that Don Diego had built; for the Biccherna of 1553, the defence of Montalcino; for 1555, the last year of the free Republic, an allegory of the siege--St Paul with Siena in the background and the inscription: "All, who wish to live justly, suffer persecution." The Medicean arms appear in a tavoletta of 1558; after which, in 1559, the Biccherna gives us the treaty of Câteau Cambresis, the Gabella the surrender of Montalcino; and in the Tavola di Biccherna of 1561 we see Cosimo de' Medici making his entry into Siena. After this, the note is changed. We have a few tavole dealing with the efforts of Christendom to roll back the Turk (1566, 1568, 1571), and with such events of universal interest as the Reform of the Calendar or the fall of Ferrara; but, for the most part, the Camarlinghi under the new regime contented themselves with recording the domestic affairs of their Medicean masters in the spirit of a Court chronicle, or adding their tribute to the devotion to the Madonna of Provenzano. There are also some excellent miniature paintings shown here, especially by Sano di Pietro in the Statutes of the Arte di Mercanzia, 1472, and by Niccolò di Ser Sozzo Tegliacci representing the Assumption, 1336, one of the finest miniatures of the fourteenth century. Beyond the palace is the Piazza Piccolomini, with the Loggia del Papa that Antonio Federighi built for Pius II. in 1462, inscribed "Pius II., Supreme Pontiff, to his Kinsmen the Piccolomini"--a kind of architectural glorification of discriminating nepotism. The church of San Martino, in its present form, dates from the latter part of the Cinquecento. On the right of the entrance is the votive picture of the Battle of Camollia, commissioned by the Balìa in honour of the Immaculate Conception in 1526, and painted by Giovanni di Lorenzo Cini. While the battle is raging outside the walls, Heaven opens and the Madonna appears with Angels, to protect her chosen city from papal aggression. Over the third altar on the left is a poetically conceived Nativity by Beccafumi, unfortunately much darkened, painted about 1523, with what Vasari calls _un ballo di Angeli bellissimo_--exquisite Angels clustering round the Divine Child, or circling ecstatically round the Mystical Dove that hovers above the ruins of the pagan world. The marble framework of the altar is by Il Marrina. The church contains also a Circumcision by Guido Reni. There was a great burning of vanities here in the piazza on June 1st, 1488, after a sermon by Fra Bernardino da Asti; false hair, dice, cards, masks and the like were heaped together, with a figure of a devil on the top, and the whole fired.