Sometime during the year 1337, the Sienese painter Ambrogio Lorenzetti began planning one of the most innovative works in the history of European art. Frescoed on three of the four walls of the executive council room of the Palazzo Pubblico in Siena, the painting is huge — almost twenty feet high and a hundred and twenty feet in total length. It is even more colossal in ambition than in scale. The picture is the first naturalistic landscape in Western painting, and the first detailed cityscape. It also portrays a number of allegorical personifications of virtues and vices. Taken together, all these elements combine to provide one of the most acute depictions of the contrasting characteristics of tyranny and justice ever made. The earliest known title for the painting is Peace and War, but today it is commonly referred to as the Allegories of Good and Bad Government. What it has to say is still pertinent today — alas, especially today — almost seven hundred years later. The painting has three sections, each corresponding to one wall. The central portion depicts an allegory of Good Government. It is an intricate representation consisting of some sixty figures, chief among them personifications of Justice, Peace, Concord, and Commonwealth. On the wall to the right is a picture of the blessings of Good Government; we see the city of Siena and its countryside flourishing; people are at work, study, and play; and a watchful personification of Security flies above in the sky. By contrast, on the wall to the left is an allegory of Bad Government and a portrayal of the destruction it brings. There the central allegorical figure is Tyranny, who holds court among vices, including Pride, Greed, Anger, Fraud, Cruelty, and Divisiveness. In this picture, Justice is shown cast down, and Siena is coming apart. Buildings are aflame, crime is in the streets, and Fear hovers over it all. A poem running along the bottom of the frescoes, supplemented by scrolls with inscriptions held by Security and Fear, and two short texts below Peace and Tyranny, explain the meaning of the images, in case the viewer was in any doubt. Under the rule of a just government, citizens as long as they respect the common good will be free to go forth and pursue the life they seek. They can achieve the good life; the poem calls it the dolce vita — one of the earliest known uses of the term. By contrast, under tyranny, “Justice is bound,” “each seeks only his own good,” and “the land lies in waste.” Quoting the Book of Wisdom, an inscription in the central allegory of Good Government dictates the frescoes’ major command: “Love Justice ye who govern on earth.” These words were meant to instruct the council members who sat in the room — the so-called Nine — as well as all other citizens of the city. It is in the details that the image comes to life, and its analysis of justice and tyranny gains strength. Near the center of the Allegory of Good Government, for instance, stands a group of twenty-four men. They vary in age, from young to old, and we can see by their clothes that while all are well-off, they come from different professions; the group includes merchants, physicians, knights, judges, and a law professor. Each of the men holds with one hand a cord that runs between them; this cord extends from the personification of Justice at the upper left in the image, down to Concord (which literally means “with cord”) below her, and then across the picture to the allegory of Bene Comune at the upper right, a bearded figure sitting on a throne like a king, and flanked by the Virtues. This venerable man represents Commonwealth or the Common Good, and he is also meant to personify the city and government of Siena. The metaphor that the bond of Concord was what held society together was an ancient one, going back to Cicero and Augustine, and it was still much discussed in political treatises in fourteenth-century Italy. The poem below the painting explains that the twenty-four men represent the “animi molti” who together make the Common Good the ruler. It is standard in English to translate animi molti as “many souls,” but as Gabriella Piccinni stipulates in Operazione Buon Governo, her excellent book on the frescoes, in Italian the word animo means mind, not soul, and has connotations of understanding, opinion, or thought. What we see therefore is a group of men of different stations and many opinions who all voluntarily agree to live in concord for the sake of peace and the common good. When we do so, promises the poem, “every public benefit ensues — useful, necessary and pleasurable.” The poem invites viewers to turn their gaze to the right wall to see what the republic of Siena can look like in this blessed state of peace and abundance. The captivating picture that occupies this wall is naturalistic in detail but idyllic in mood. It divides evenly into two sections. At the left is the city of Siena, easily identifiable by the presence of several landmarks: the cathedral, with its distinctive dome and campanile in green and white marble; the tower of the Palazzo Pubblico, which is shown under construction, as it was at the time; and the southern gate of the city, the Porta Romana. The streets of the city are spacious and filled with light, and the buildings are brightly colored in rose, lavender, and silvery grey. Shops are open for business: we see weavers and wool merchants, a goldsmith, a shoemaker, a grocer. Snuggled between the stores there is a window into a classroom where a professor is instructing students, who are concentrating on what he says. It is a city alive with pleasure and delight, not just industry and commerce. In a piazza in the foreground, nine young women in long flowing dresses are dancing and singing; in the background a
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