History

Bernardo Tolomei’s foundation at Monte Oliveto was exceptional in the history of Italian monasticism in one important respect: it was founded by a member of the Sienese ruling class at the height of his city’s political and economic power, not as a retreat from failure but as a voluntary abandonment of success. Tolomei had been a distinguished jurist and member of the governing council of Siena; he lost his sight in 1313, recovered it (an event he interpreted as miraculous), and in 1319 retired to the clay badlands with two companions. The Olivetan Congregation received papal approval in 1344 from Clement VI; Bernardo Tolomei died nursing the sick during the Black Death of 1348 and was canonised by Pope Benedict XVI in 2009.

The great cloister frescoes were commissioned in the late 15th century, when Monte Oliveto had become the richest and most prestigious house of the Olivetan Congregation. Luca Signorelli of Cortona painted the first nine scenes between 1497 and 1498; the remaining twenty-seven were painted by Sodoma (Giovanni Antonio Bazzi, a Lombard artist based in Siena) between 1505 and 1508. The two cycles sit comfortably together — Signorelli’s more severe, Sodoma’s more lyrical — forming a coherent narrative whole that is one of the supreme achievements of Central Italian Renaissance painting outside Florence and Rome.