GOOD AND BAD GOVERNMENT

"Peace" from the Allegory 
of Good Government

Urbanismo spends a lot of time making parallels between traditional American urbanism and old-world cities in Italy and England. Martha Banta, in her book One True Theory and the Quest for an American Aesthetic (Yale U Press, 2007, 104-5) makes a significant point about the most important uses of public art, one that we would do well to consider:

"Washington DC was unable to provide what the Italian tradition had so much of- well-trained artists and artisans possessed of many skills, the cooperation of guildsmen and bureaucrats, and the willingness of the communes to pay the necessary costs in money and patronage- yet there are certain similarities between what Florence and Rome achieved through their art and architecture and the motives that lay behind America’s capital. Some of these connections are strong, others are loose, but together they provide comparative perspectives that aid in a better understanding of what is involved in making a public art that matched public policies. Both decided that what mattered most was the celebration of the virtus of government power, not the virtu of good government. . . . 

But what is present in Siena’s Palazzo Pubblico and sorely missed in the Capitol are frescoes that are visual indicators of what is required of a country’s civic leaders if they wish to advance beyond mere economic and military victories. The three walls in the Sala della Pace (or Sala d’Nove) are covered by Ambrogio Lorenzetti’s murals of 1338-39, allegories known as the Good Government and Bad Government. Beyond their great beauty and the proud position they hold in art history for initiating major innovations in theme and technique is their quiet affirmation of the importance of the city’s commitment to a system based on serving the people with honesty and justice.”  

Detail of Bad Government -The figure of justice lies bound at the feet of tyranny

                                                 Detail of Good Government - The inscription reads:  

“Turn your eyes to behold her, you who are governing, who is portrayed here [Justice], crowned on account of her excellence, who always renders to everyone his due. Look how many goods derive from her and how sweet and peaceful is that life of the city where is preserved this virtue who outshines any other. She guards and defends those who honor her, and nourishes and feeds them. From her light is both requiting those who do good and giving due punishment to the wicked."

The Allegory and Effects of Good and Bad Government in Sienna's Palazzo Publico (Town Hall) was commissioned in the 1330s to remind the assembled councillors of the importance of virtue in government, by contrasting just republican government with corrupt tyrannical rule.  

The Lawful, Lucid, and Intelligible City

Masaccio: Frescos in the
Brancacci Chapel, Florence

Chris Miller (Early Morning Discussions) commenting on Norris Kelly Smith's Here I Stand: Perspectives From Another Point of View:


Norris Kellly Smith: "It is in keeping with the perspectivist's concern for ethical integrity that they should have been drawn to subjects exemplifying Christ's power to bring wholeness, sanity, and order into the world that perennially lacks just those qualities. This is the burden of Masaccio's frescoes in the Brancacci Chapel which deal with the powerful presence of the man Peter as he brings to bear the force of his authority upon the sicknesses, both spiritual and economic, of the Christian community of Florence"

Miller: Can you imagine such a mural being painted today? High-end Contemporary art is collected by a financial community that has specialized (and profited) from exactly the opposite of economic health.

In the contemporary world, only children's book illustration would suggest "the possibility of a world this lawful, lucid, and intelligible, but only by virtue of our being willing to accept a responsive and responsible position within the order of things"...as Smith feels is presented by Masaccio.

Urbanismo

          While Mr. Belcher chatted quietly to his fiancée, Friday, February and Gail sat in silence, getting used to it all and just gazing at the Palazzo Vecchio and the copy of Michelangelo’s David and the Neptune fountain and the statues in the Loggia dei Lanzi and everything. Gradually they began to feel that they had always been sitting right there and that Marsh Manor and Boreham and Withering Heights and the journey out really were part of some other life.
          “It’s rather marvelous, don’t you think?” said Mr. Belcher quietly, at length.
          “Marvelous,” said Miss Pankhurst.
          “Marvelous,” they all agreed.
          “Not exactly beautiful,” he went on. “Indeed in some ways definitely ugly.” I’ve never cared for any of the statues individually, but taken as a whole it’s . . . marvelous. I suppose there are few places in the world that have seen more violence and sudden death and beastliness of every kind. Savonarola burnt most of the books in Florence just over there—and was soon afterwards burnt there himself. The Pazzi conspirators who tried to murder Lorenzo di Medici, and did murder his brother, were strung up where those hooks are—probably the same hooks. And I dare not imagine the tortured screams that must have sounded inside the palace itself. Yet everything that is finest in the Christian-Humanist tradition for the last six hundred years and more has somehow been linked with this piazza—has, so to speak, grown out of the murder and bloodshed that are associated with all these stones. Skulduggery and idealism have always gone hand in hand—and nowhere more so than in Florence. The horror fades. What is truly worth having endures. As a Latin motto puts it, ‘I arise afresh under a better omen’.”

Image and text by John Verney from ismo (Holt, Rinehart and Winston: New York, 1964)