11 - Control of Emotions and Comforting Practices before the Scaffold in Medieval and Early Modern Italy (with Some Remarks on Lorenzetti’s Fresco)

Summary

Introduction

As preliminary remarks, I would find it useful to come back to the detail of Ambrogio Lorenzetti's fresco figuring as front image of the conference for which this paper was originally written [fig. 1]. The winged woman flying just over the countryside is Securitas (“Security”), embodying the political response of Justice to the “anxiety of the Republics.”1 Such anxiety is in turn represented by Timor (“Fear”), which is put in the fresco just in front of Securitas, on the opposite side of the room. Here's a transcription of Security's cartiglio (“scroll”):

Senca pavra ognvom franco camini

elavorando semini ciascvno

mentre che tal comvno

manterra qvesta do(n)na i(n) signoria

chel alevata arei ogni balia.

The image vividly shows how the signoria (“dominion”) of this lady (the Justice) is possible: this delicate angel-shaped figure fierily exhibits on its hand a gallows with a hanged man. The essential condition that allows a citizen to walk free (ogn’uom franco camini) is that the criminal justice efficiently works. Why, however, is such the only virtue represented outside the city, in the so-called effects of good government in the countryside? I’d like to propose a little suggestion, hopefully convincing, for that. If we better take a look at the whole fresco [fig. 2], Securitas is actually not flying in the open country, but just outside the city walls. Indeed, that was the place where criminal justice usually achieved its office: a parallel look at the famous Pianta della Catena [fig. 3], for instance, shows that the scaffold for public executions was normally placed just outside the city walls, in Florence as well in Siena and in almost all the Italian cities.

There is however another subtler – but not less meaningful – hint in Lorenzetti's detail, which I think was completely ignored until now.3 By focusing a little more on the silhouette of the hanged man, we can in fact easily figure out a devil's face in what normally seems to be a white simple dress stirred up by the wind [fig. 4].