“La bellissima inventiva” is a video mapping made on the occasion of the restoration of the famous cycle of frescoes, painted by Ambrogio Lorenzetti between 1337 and 1339, in the Sala dei Nove in Siena’s Palazzo Pubblico. A majestic cycle known as the “Allegory of Good and Bad Government.”
The video mapping “La bellissima inventiva” takes up the narrative structure of the song and the characters depicted by Lorenzetti, the historical context of the work and the atmosphere of the fresco, to celebrate the beauty of the pictorial cycle and the importance of its admonition to cultivate peace and concord.
We animated each character in the allegory by projecting directly onto the facade of the Palazzo. We animated each character in the allegory by projecting directly onto the facade of the Palazzo. To do so, we made use of the 1350 reconstruction of the facade of the Palace, taken from Fabio Gabbrielli’s volume, “Medieval Siena, the Civil Architecture,” but above all, we made use of the deep knowledge of the work and its innermost meanings of Dr. Veronica Randon, the historical-scientific contact person for the entire project and a valuable assistant director. The idea of titling the performance “La bellissima inventiva” was suggested to us by her.
The audience, was able to go through every detail of the pictorial cycle during the performance. The sun rises on the idyll of Good Government and then eclipses on the inauspicious consequences of Bad Government. The sun is precisely the symbol of San Bernardino, it is that bas-relief that surmounts the facade of the Palace and which, together with Lorenzetti’s immortal signature (“Ambrosius Laurentii de Senis hic pinxit utrinque…”), closes the show, bringing us back to the present day.
