On the cover: Ambrogio Lorenzetti – Dancing Women (The Effects of Good Government in the City) – fresco – 1338–1339 – Siena – Palazzo Pubblico, Sala dei Nove or Sala della Pace

Clothing Aspects in ambrogio Lorenzetti's Allegoy of God and Bad Government: a Semiotc and Philosophical Political Approach

Chair: Alessio Francesco Palmieri Marinoni

Lorenzetti’s great masterpiece for the Palazzo Pubblico in Siena, despite its complexity, can be summarised through two exemplary statements. The first, taken from Dante Alighieri’s political treatise, states: “Wherever there can be dispute, there must be judgement” (De Monarchia, Book I, Chapter XII). This is complemented by the words of the great medieval historian Johan Huizinga: “Every age longs for a more beautiful world.”

In the Sala dei Nove of the Palazzo Pubblico in Siena, we find a political manifesto deeply desired and sought after by medieval humanity. It is an iconographic programme that does not merely address political theories; rather, it offers a realistic representation of how the dramatic opposition between the pursuit of personal good — the origin of all violence — and the aspiration towards the common good forms the counterpart to the absence of harmonious coexistence.

Within this context and iconographic programme, it is the Kantian concept of the self that makes the difference: it is therefore the individual dimension that, also through the use of an appropriate sartorial semantics, gives rise to the development of virtuous forms of government.