Works of Art
The cathedral's valuable pieces of art including The Feast of Herod by Donatello, and works by Bernini and the young Michelangelo make it an extraordinary museum of Italian sculpture. The Annunciation between St. Ansanus and St. Margaret, a masterwork of Gothic painting by Simone Martini and Lippo Memmi, decorated a side altar of the church until 1799, when it was moved to the Uffizi of Florence.
The funeral monument for cardinal Riccardo Petroni (Siena 1250 - Genoa 1314, a jurisconsult of Pope Boniface VIII) was erected between 1317 and 1318 by the Sienese sculptor Tino di Camaino. He had succeeded his father as the master builder of the Siena cathedral. The marble monument in the left transept is the earliest example of 14th century funeral architecture. It is composed of a richly decorated sarcophagus, held aloft on the shoulders of four statues. Above the sarcophagus, two angels draw apart a curtain, revealing the cardinal lying on his deathbed, accompanied by two guardian angels. The monument is crowned by a spired tabernacle with statues of the Madonna and Child, Saint Peter and Saint Paul.
In the pavement, in front of this monument, lies the bronze tombstone of Bishop Giovanni di Bartolomeo Pecci, bishop of Grosseto, made by Donatello in 1427. It shows the dead prelate laid out in a concave bier in highly illusionistic low relief. Looking at it obliquely from the end of the tomb, gives the impression of a three-dimensionality. It was originally located in front of the high altar and moved to the present location in 1506.
The wall tomb of bishop Tommaso Piccolomini del Testa is set above the small door leading to the bell tower. It is the work of the Sienese painter and sculptor Neroccio di Bartolomeo de' Landi in 1483.
The Piccolomini altar, left of the entrance to the library, is the work of the Lombard sculptor Andrea Bregno in 1483. This altarpiece is remarkable because of the four sculptures in the lower niches, made by the young Michelangelo between 1501 and 1504: Saint Peter, Saint Paul, Saint Gregory (with the help of an assistant) and Saint Pius. On top of the altar is the Madonna and Child, a sculpture (probably) by Jacopo della Quercia.
Many of the Duomo's original furnishings, such as Duccio di Buoninsegna's Maestà and Cimabue's stained glass window, have been removed to the nearby Museo dell'Opera del Duomo.
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“The ancients of the ideal description, instead of trying to turn their impracticable chimeras, as does the modern dreamer, into social and political prodigies, deposited them in great works of art, which still live while states and constitutions have perished, bequeathing to posterity not shameful defects but triumphant successes.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)
“Every man is in a state of conflict, owing to his attempt to reconcile himself and his relationship with life to his conception of harmony. This conflict makes his soul a battlefield, where the forces that wish this reconciliation fight those that do not and reject the alternative solutions they offer. Works of art are attempts to fight out this conflict in the imaginative world.”
—Rebecca West (1892–1983)
“Now they express
All that’s content to wear a worn-out coat,
All actions done in patient hopelessness,
All that ignores the silences of death,
Thinking no further than the hand can hold,
All that grows old,
Yet works on uselessly with shortened breath.”
—Philip Larkin (1922–1986)
“Classical art, in a word, stands for form; romantic art for content. The romantic artist expects people to ask, What has he got to say? The classical artist expects them to ask, How does he say it?”
—R.G. (Robin George)