Ambrogio Lorenzettis Good and Bad Government

This book sheds new light on one of the most important artworks of the early Italian Renaissance, Ambrogio Lorenzettis fresco cycle of Good and Bad Government in the Palazzo Pubblico in Siena. By connecting the images with the Hymn to Justice inscribed on the walls and highlighting Ambrogios ingenuity and personal approach to the subject the volume presents a fresh reading of its rich artistic message. In 1338 Ambrogio Lorenzetti painted three huge frescoes, known today as Good and Bad Government, on the walls of the Sala dei Nove, the Room of the Nine, in the Palazzo Pubblico in Siena, where the citys nine executive magistrates presided over the destiny of this famous commune. The frescoes were meant to be strong visual reminders of the Noves duties and an admonishment of the nefarious effects of bad government. Boasting the largest artists signature of all time, the frescoes are testament to the extremely high esteem in which Ambrogios art was held by his fellow citizens. Nowadays Good and Bad Government has become one of the most widely reproduced works of the early Renaissance and is recognized for its many innovations, including the first European panorama of a cityscape and countryside. But what sort of visual journey was Ambrogio asking the Nove to make through this expanse? In pursuit of an elusive answer, the murals have become one of arts great puzzles, challenging scholars and public alike. Scant attention, however, has been paid to the images themselves. They have been studied merely as symbols and allegories of abstract political concepts in which good and bad government are starkly juxtaposed. Despite his enormous signature, Ambrogio has been treated more as a servile illustrator than a creative artist, disregarding his highly personal approach to painting and the way his visual ingenuity, from composition to brushwork, shaped a far more complex and fascinating message. This book attempts finally to illuminate Ambrogios pictorial strategy by reading it in light of the Hymn to Justice inscribed upon the walls. The frescoes enrich the poets message, subtly changing and even subverting it. Instead of a pictorial lecture straightforwardly contrasting a utopia with a dystopia, Ambrogio blurs the binaries and invites the viewer to look beneath the idyllic surface of Sienese civic life.