Ambrogio Lorenzetti’s Good and Bad Government reconsidered

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