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This essay addresses the significance of the Assumption of the Virgin fresco in the Baptistery of Siena and the existence of an adjacent tunnel that connects the Baptistery to the Cathedral above. The traditional celebration of the Assumption of the Virgin in Siena is described; previously unpublished documents stating that a play of the Assumption was performed add new details to the picture. Other contemporary Sienese religious dramas, some little-known to modern scholars, are discussed to illustrate what the play of the Assumption could have entailed. It is proposed that the tunnel, or trapdoor, was used to conceal ropes that raised an effigy of the Assunta during the feast-day Mass., Crowning the vault above the altar of the Siena Baptistery is the Assumption of the Virgin (figs. 1, 2) painted ca. 1450 by Lorenzo di Pietro, better known as Vecchietta [...]

The DOMINICAN friar GIOVANNI DOMINICI (1356-1419) was an influential, charismatic, and popular preacher, and an important figure in the political world of RENAISSANCE FLORENCE, but neglected in modern scholarship. This study offers a thorough summary of Dominici's political views as well as a biographical portrait, a bibliographical survey, and a discussion of Dominici's preaching style. The article draws on a large, unpublished collection of Dominici's sermons from the Biblioteca Riccardiana, dating from 1400 to 1406. Dominici emerges as an ambivalent participant in Florentine politics, advocating some of its civic values such as the active life and patriotism, while fiercely criticizing humanist ideals such as the use of rhetoric in politics and the rise of the professional politician., INTRODUCTION In a letter to the well-known merchant, Francesco Datini, Chiara Gambacorta, a nun from an aristocratic Pisan family, wrote: I know that the venerable preacher, our father, the Friar [...]

The last fifteen to twenty years have witnessed a phenomenal growth in the study of medieval and Renaissance confraternities, those lay religious associations that pervaded the spiritual and social fabric [...]

In the last few decades religion and the church have moved from the margins -- or, more precisely, the chronological borders -- of Italian Renaissance studies to their center. Less [...]