Siena, 20 years after discovery, the Thebaid and its entire environment will be restored

The Society of Executors of Pious Dispositions, heir to the company of the Disciplinati of Santa Maria under the vaults of the Spedale, one of the oldest and most important Sienese confraternal associations whose origins date back to the late thirteenth century, still has its historic headquarters on theeighth level of the monumental complex of the Spedale Santa Maria della Scala. A steep 18th-century staircase connects the Corticella area to the compagnia dei Disciplinati on the floor below by crossing an irregularly structured room that is completely frescoed with the cycle of the Thebaid, so-called because it is set in the desert of Thebes in Egypt. Between 1999 and 2000, during the functional renovation and restoration of the Spedale to be used as a museum center on a project by architect Guido Canali, monochrome frescoes were accidentally found on the walls and vault of this room, predominantly red and yellow earth, distributed over three registers with stories from the lives of the early Church Fathers. The Sienese cycle depicts work activities in the fields, from plowing to reaping, from tending the garden with spading, hoeing and planting seedlings, then moments of prayer and meditation, the peaceful relationship with animals and nature, works of charity such as burying the dead, care for the sick even temptations up to episodes dedicated to important hermit saints such as St. Paul, St. Anthony Abbot, St. Jerome and the penitent St. Mary of Egypt. The latter frescoes, located in the vault and walls of the room beyond the staircase, which were rediscovered by removing the false ceiling and several layers of lime whitewash, are the most degraded and fragmentary paintings. In contrast, the murals above the staircase are in a good state of preservation because they were never whitewashed but hidden in the cavity above the barrel vault of the staircase, which has been partially removed. One appreciates the extraordinary quality of the paintings with stories of anchorites done with skillful narrative taste and effective characterization of the faces of the characters and with the vigorous plastic rendering of the cloaked bodies of the anchorites. The landscape is not barren but with broad-crowned trees with bright foliage and from caves, chapels and churches. Some of the scenes are illustrative: the two hermits encountering the mocking and gleeful young hunters; the two monks trying to convince the doubting bearded anchorite of the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist; two other monks rescuing a dying hermit at the entrance of a cave who later discovers that it is a woman disguised as a monk; the boatman with his hair blowing in the wind carrying a frowning, bearded old monk.

The cycle of the Thebaid preserved in one of the rooms pertaining to the Society of Executors of Pious Dispositions represents one of the most important discoveries of the last two decades of the Sienese artistic heritage preserved in the great monumental complex of the ancient Spedale. In his first study of this figurative cycle (2001), art historian Alessandro Bagnoli prudently considered presenting the paintings as the work of an anonymous “Master of the Thebaid,” a painter who had treasured the teaching of Ambrogio and Pietro Lorenzetti and could correspond to the activity of the young Lippo Vanni or that of Niccolò di ser Sozzo and as well as that of the so-called Second Master of Sant’Eugenio. Later (2009) the same scholar attributed the wall paintings to Lippo Vanni, a painter who is known from 1341 as a miniaturist for the Spedale and for the choir books of the Opera del Duomo and the collegiate church of San Gimignano. The Thebaid can be dated to the early 1340s, specifically between 1341 and 1345, before the great plague of 1348, because of the clothing of the two rich and bold young men, which testifies to the change in fashion that took place precisely in those years (Bagnoli 2001).

After twenty years since the discovery and several attempts to raise the necessary funds for the recovery of the pictorial cycle, the restoration and enhancement of the entire environment is finally underway with the restyling of the staircase with a new glass and steel parapet thanks to the generous financial support of Robert Cope, president of the Vaseppi Foundation, an English patron who is passionate about Italian art and has already been involved in the preservation of Italian cultural heritage for several years.

The Thebaid project saw in 2021-2022 a preparatory phase of archaeological investigation supervised by archaeologist Alberto Agresti with the removal of the numerous debris behind the parapet of the current staircase, probably deposited at the time of its construction after the second half of the eighteenth century, with very relevant results. What emerged were: (a) remnants of the first flight of the fourteenth-century staircase contemporary with the frescoes, consisting of 13 brick steps, which ascended leaning against the east wall to a landing from which the new ramp departed in a westerly direction; in recent studies (Gabbrielli 2018,2021) traces of this staircase have already been detected in the small compartment of the under staircase with paintings on the walls coeval with the fourteenth-century pictorial cycle); (b) discovery of new wall paintings on the north wall and the small volticle (praying monk from the Thebaid cycle and figure with halo, starry sky) and on the east wall, on which the debris was leaning,a kind of mock balustrade graffitied and painted with marble mirrors that follows the course of the ancient staircase; (c) the outline of a large plugged arch, which appeared under the fourteenth-century paintings of the same east wall, perhaps corresponding to the primitive thirteenth-century access to the Oratory of the Disciplined. These new architectural and pictorial elements open up new perspectives and may help to clarify the original conformation of the Tebaide room and its primitive destination, at the moment believed to be “a sort of anticappella or at any rate an access andito to more interior rooms” of the ancient company of the Disciplinati (Corsi 2016).

The restoration of the frescoes and the staircase with a project approved by the Soprintendenza Archeologia Belle Arti e Paesaggio of Siena, Grosseto and Arezzo, which is responsible for supervising the execution of the works, has already begun and will be completed, barring unforeseen circumstances, within a year, at the end of spring 2024. The restoration of the frescoes has been entrusted to Massimo Gavazzi, a restorer of proven professionalism, with the collaboration of Luca Bellaccini, the direction of the works to architect Alessandro Bagnoli, and the art direction to art historian Laura Martini.

To assist the research and restoration work, a scientific commission was formed, of which three professors from the Department of Historical Sciences and Cultural Heritage of the University of Siena (Alessandro Bagnoli, Fabio Gabbrielli, Michele Pellegrini) are members. With the recent discoveries and restoration of this masterpiece of Sienese art, a new phase of studies has begun that is likely to lead to shedding light on the iconographic program, the original function of the frescoed room and its patronage, adding new chapters to the very rich and complex history of Santa Maria della Scala and the institutions that still coexist in it.

Pictured is a detail of the Thebaid with bold hunters and monks confabulating.

Siena, 20 years after discovery, the Thebaid and its entire environment will be restored

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