Architettura e committenza a Siena nel Cinquecento: l’attività di Baldassarre Peruzzi e la storia di palazzo Francesconi

The multifaceted relationship between new and ancient, continuity and change, individual taste and collective interest is a fundamental question for understanding the built environment. And in particular, how the ideological position of the governors and of the elite modifies the aspect of a city? If, as in this case, the city is Siena, with its magnificent civic medieval tradition, in addition to the fact that an exhaustive picture of Renaissance Siena many aspects is still lacking, the search of the traces of this mutation can be complex. The subject is developed investigating in particular Baldassarre Peruzzi’s architectural activity in the city. The book, published by the Accademia Senese degli Intronati, still existing and founded in those same years with which the book is dealing with (around 1525), tries thus to illuminate a convulsive period of Siena’s political-architectonic history: the stormy and troubled period of early 16th century going from the ascent of Pandolfo the Magnificent to the fall of the Sienese Republic. Based on extensive archival research in the Archivio di Stato, direct surveys and on site confrontations, the research investigates some of the palaces attributed to Peruzzi in Siena: Francesconi, Vescovi, Ghianderoni, trying to erase the “alone of mystery” that surrounds the relationship between Baldassarre Peruzzi and the city. In particular, the book focuses on palazzo Francesconi (later Mocenni and today Coli Bizzarrini), almost unknown to the same Sienese inhabitants and never specifically studied.