Few medieval artworks feel as blunt, ambitious, or unsettling as Ambrogio Lorenzetti’s Allegory of Good and Bad Government.
Painted not for a church but for a seat of power, the fresco cycle covers the walls of Siena’s Sala dei Nove (also called the Hall of Peace) inside the Palazzo Pubblico.
This was effectively Siena’s Oval Office — the room where the Nine, the city’s ruling council, met to govern. What they faced on those walls was not decoration, but a warning.
Completed between 1337 and 1341, Lorenzetti’s frescoes are among the most extraordinary political statements of the Middle Ages. They are also unique.
This is the only surviving secular cycle from the period to depict everyday urban and rural life at scale. No saints, no biblical scenes, no celestial hierarchies. Just government, power, consequence.
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Fresco Cycle
Allegory of Good Government
At the center is the Allegory of Good Government. Justice presides, flanked by the Common Good and surrounded by civic virtues: Prudence, Temperance, Fortitude, Magnanimity, Concord, Hope, and Peace.
Lorenzetti borrows the moral clarity and compositional authority of Giotto’s frescoes in the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua, but redirects them toward civic life.
This is not theology. It is instruction.
Good government, the fresco insists, is not abstract. It’s assembled, virtue by virtue, and constantly maintained.
Peace herself is the most arresting figure. Draped in a sheer gown, reclining rather than standing, she appears almost provocatively at ease.
Her visible breasts would have been startling to a medieval audience, and that discomfort is intentional. Peace, Lorenzetti suggests, is not modest or militant.
She’s the result of work done elsewhere. When justice and civic virtue function properly, peace has nothing to do but rest.
The effects of good government unfold across the adjoining wall in an imagined Siena at its best. The city bustles with commerce.
Buildings rise, craftsmen work, merchants trade, and a group of dancers — their gender deliberately ambiguous — move in a public square.
Beyond the city walls, the countryside thrives. Fields are cultivated, crops harvested, roads maintained.
This sweeping panorama is one of the earliest large-scale landscapes in Western art. And it presents prosperity as collective, visible, and fragile.
Allegory of Bad Government
The opposite wall offers no such reassurance. The Allegory of Bad Government is darker, literally and figuratively.
It was never illuminated by natural light and today remains in poorer condition, even after recent conservation work. It basically serves as a warning label.
At its center stands Tyranny. He’s a grotesque figure with fangs, horns, and an unsettling, crossed gaze.
He’s surrounded by personifications of vice — Cruelty, Fraud, Treason, Fury, Division. Justice, bound and powerless, lies discarded at his feet.
The consequences are immediate and brutal. Cities burn. Buildings crumble.
Murders take place in the open. Fields lie fallow, land neglected, security vanished.
Where good government builds, bad government unravels. Lorenzetti does not soften the contrast.
This is not a moral fable meant to comfort. It is a threat rendered in pigment.
Why The Frescos Matter
Taken together, the frescoes form a complete argument. They are promise and warning, aspiration and deterrent.
Unlike most political art, Lorenzetti offers no triumph. Only the uneasy suggestion that good government is temporary and must be constantly defended.
Allegory here is not symbolic fluff; it’s a political tool.
The Nine were meant to see themselves in these images every time they entered the room. A reminder that power could produce order or destruction, prosperity or collapse.
What makes the fresco cycle so enduring is not its optimism, but its anxiety. Good government, Lorenzetti implies, is rare, contingent, and always under pressure.
It doesn’t come from a king. It comes from shared civic virtue.
The frescoes don’t celebrate stability. They dramatize how easily it can be lost. Seven centuries later, that message still feels uncomfortably intact.
Practical Visiting Tips
Address: Il Campo, 1, 53100 Siena. It’s right on Siena’s iconic main square, Piazza del Campo.
Hours:
October 31 – March 15: 10:00 am – 6:00 pm (last entry ~5:15 pm)
March 16 – October 31: 10:00 am – 7:00 pm (last entry ~6:15 pm)
Tickets: Adult entry ~€6 – €10 (depends on season and ticket type). Click here to book a ticket.
Pro Tip: The ticket to climb Torre del Mangia (the tall tower on the palace) is usually separate, not included in the standard museum ticket. A combined ticket for the palace and tower is €15.
I hope you’ve enjoyed my guide to Lorenzetti’s frescos in Siena. You may find these other Tuscany guides useful:
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