Even the tax documents are gorgeous here!

Il buon governo-1474 Ambrogio Lorenzetti

On Wednesday we visited the Archivio di Stato in Siena to view the biccherne or tax documents of the city. Thrilling as this may NOT seem, I think it should be on the Siena Top 10 list. The collection is housed just beside the Campo (Archivio), and houses all of the double city's tax, hospital, birth, baptism and death records dating back into the 13th century. Our objective was to view the covers of tax records from the  financial offices of the Biccherna  and Gabella, and expense accounts from Ospedale de Sta. Maria della Scala.

Early records were kept by French monks in double-entry account books that showed all city revenues and expenses. Sometime in the 13th century they began the practice of binding records between heavy wooden panels with egg tempera paintings. The paintings evolved-starting with pictures of office activities (the earliest we saw was of Brother Hugo sitting at the government tax table with accounting books, bags of money and the seals of the city's nobility in front of him. The city started commissioning some of its great artists to paint the covers with themes of important events in the city's history the year of each bound accounting record. One of my favorites is above- Il Buon Governo presumed to be by Ambrogio Lorenzetti (he did the Good Government frescoes blogged about early herein).

In it, we see the allegorical figure of Good Government sitting at a throne with the wolf that nursed Siena's legendary founders (Senius was the son of Remus, legend is that he and his brother Aschius were also raisedd by wolves after Remus was killed by Romulus at the founding of Rome). Presumably Good Government is overseeing city expenditures and assuring that fairness prevail.

You can trace the history of the city just from the covers of these records (who among us can say this even about our small personal financial files!). During plague years or times of strife, the covers depicted pleas to the Virgin Mary. It says a lot about a city's character that even during hard times they sought to elevate their people with beautiful images.

Unfortunately, no pictures are allowed. I used reproducible images here. You may want to see others by google image searching for them. Here is a nice write up with some of the most wonderful images: Sienese Biccherne