By Wynn Wilkinson
Between 1337 and 1339, the early Italian Renaissance painter Ambrogio Lorenzetti painted a series of six frescoes in the Republic of Siena’s Palazzo Pubblico, or town hall, that have earned the artist a surprising spot on the list of most relevant Western commentators on the origin of the state, right beside big names like Thomas Paine and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Painted in the Sala dei Nove, or Room of Nine, these pieces cover every wall in the meeting space where the nine elected magistrates of Siena met. Lorenzetti’s work addresses the powerful executive leaders of the republic with a particular governmental counsel and acts as a permanent installation of advice for how they should perform their duties as officials.
Known as the Allegory of Good and Bad Government, these vivid and intricate artworks describe Lorenzetti’s visions of correct and incorrect governance. Via pigment and plaster, the Sienese artist masterfully illustrates such governmental components as ideal and deficient societal structure, the personified virtues and vices involved, and the real-world effects of both manners of rulership. Four frescoes are dedicated to the impacts of good and bad government in both the city and the country, demonstrating in an evocative, contrasting manner the probable outcomes of what Lorenzetti both proposes and warns against. Most fascinating are the Allegories of themselves: two theory-dense frescoes that demonstrate in vivid metaphor how Lorenzetti thought government must be organized in order to succeed.
These allegories present a unique opportunity to us as observers that the typical political essay cannot: a visual representation of the flow of power. When Hobbes describes his Leviathan or Marx his dictatorship of the proletariat, we might imagine its shape, but we cannot with such clarity see each individual cog in the machine, and even the occasional in-text diagram cannot
display the system with the Allegories’ elegance. Lorenzetti’s unique representation of his political philosophy offers us the governance equivalent of a food web, a trophic dependency pattern that he believes will result in a prosperous society. As we undertake the perspective of a process ecologist, the Allegories morph before our eyes, each painted figure becoming a node in a loop with a hierarchical chain structure. We see how Lorenzetti’s Allegory of Good Government is emblematic of a prosperous, functional ecosystem, while his Allegory of Bad Government mirrors a sick, decaying one.
From this angle, Lorenzetti’s pieces contain several striking resemblances to observable ecosystemic properties occurring within nature. His Allegory of Good Government is most crucial to look at for two key reasons. First, its antithesis acts more as a reflective piece to drive home the legitimacy of Lorenzetti’s proposal. And second, the Allegory of Bad Government has undergone damage, and the fresco’s incomplete state makes it harder to comment on, in this work and in previous works alike. Henceforth, I’ll be relegating the Bad Allegory to a position where it will be called upon expressly to amplify contrasts, and will not focus on it.
To discuss and appreciate Lorenzetti’s thesis in proper detail, we must learn his cast of characters and how they interact with one another in the same manner as might species in an ecosystem or nodes in a food chain. The first parallel between the two Allegories comes in the hierarchical organization: both use three tiers to differentiate the type of character each figure plays in the story. In the Good Allegory, the terrene realms occupy the bottom space, populated by people: citizens, the military, and so on, in an ordered fashion. Political virtues and other major symbolic figures occupy the center tier, while the heavenly virtues hover above. In both allegories, the viewer’s eye is snapped like a magnet to the large, seated figure in the middle tier, who can be considered the “Executive” of both pieces. In the Good Allegory, he is represented
by the Common Good, a regal figure sporting the Sienese black and white on his robe, while in the Bad Allegory the Executive is Tyranny, donning cartoonishly devilish fangs and horns.
I find that these figures, and especially the depiction of the Common Good, represent at once three different elements of Lorenzetti’s theory of how governance ought to be performed. First, the Executives of Common Good and Tyranny are, in essence, emergent properties that result from governance that is attentive to the nine figures on the upper and middle tiers, i.e. both theological and political virtues and vices. Second, the Common Good occupies the highest trophic level of what might be considered a food chain, where exergy is passed through the channel facilitated by the leftmost depiction of Justice. Meanwhile, we note that Tyranny does not occupy that level due to, and this is key, a broken flow of potential energy. Finally, the Executives act as metaphors for where the Nine, should they act against or in accordance with Lorenzetti’s counsel, will find themselves. Lorenzetti demands through his art that the Nine strive to occupy the space that the Common Good does, thereby becoming embodiments of the will of the people.
Concerning the claim of emergence, our focus is pulled to the rightmost side of the Good Allegory, which tells the story of Virtues as an autocatalytic loop. The three theological virtues of Faith, Charity, and Hope (left-to-right) hover in the celestial tier above the Common Good, while Cardinal virtues of Justice, Temperance, Prudence, and Fortitude, as well as Magnanimity1 and Peace, surround the Common Good on a bench. In the Bad Allegory, the same cast remains, but inverted: Cruelty, Deceit, Fraud, Fury, Division, and War surround Tyranny on the bench while Avarice, Pride, and Vainglory float above. Lorenzetti is pointed in maintaining the thematic structure in both allegories. By surrounding his Executives with advisors in the forms of 1 An important political virtue to Roman thinkers like Cicero, who will be discussed later.
virtues and vices, the artist argues that the advisors make the Executive, i.e. that leaders who are attentive to virtue will govern for the sake of the common good, while the leaders who are attentive to vice will be tyrannical.
An inscription at the bottom of the Good Allegory written by Lorenzetti reads “[The Common Good], in order to govern his state, chooses never to turn his eyes from the resplendent faces of the Virtues who sit around him.”. This further indicates that if the virtues were absent, the Executive could never dream of embodying the Common Good. Neither tyranny nor governance for the common good are means to an end; rather they are the ends themselves, sourced from the virtues and vices present in governance. The virtues and vices form the equivalent of autocatalytic loops whose centripetal forces have stabilizing effects as the necessary building blocks, or nodes, that create the ecosystems of good and bad governance respectively.
Due to the political context and influential theories of the age, it can be inferred that Lorenzetti believed the virtues were ever-present, further proving both that the Executives are emergent and that they act as placeholders for the Nine. In Siena, where the Catholic Church was the second key political actor alongside the Nine, theological virtues were considered to be ever-present as gifts from God, which were permanent and accessible by the Nine via religious attention. The political virtues, though not granted by God, were also accessible by the Nine; Aristotle, who impacted many political thinkers including Lorenzetti, saw moral virtue as the habit of behaving in a way that struck a balance between deficiency and excess. While the virtues on the right side are static personifications, we see Aristotelian nuance and belief that virtue is a mean in the equal focus that Justice has for distributive justice (white angel) and retributive justice (red angel) on the left-most side of the Good Allegory.
The Roman statesman Cicero was another political philosopher whose authority lived on through writings into the Renaissance, and he’s notable for believing virtue to be a private responsibility and a necessity if one wanted to be a public servant. It’s obvious that his belief in a mixed government2 has also impressed itself upon Lorenzetti, who condemns tyranny but would never endorse direct democracy. Cicero, as well as Aristotle and Lorenzetti, imagined the virtues as ever-present, and humans were faced with a constant choice of whether to attend to them– a crucial decision for statesmen. It’s this decision that Lorenzetti urges the Nine to make as representatives of the republic. Should they act as a collective in accordance with the virtues offered, they will come to occupy the emergent position of the Common Good, each individual leader combining to form a sort of strongly connected component (SCC) within the system. Should they choose vice, they will come to occupy, as a unit, the position of Tyranny within the system.
Cicero’s influence is enormous here, and both thinkers are in clear agreement that for public citizens, the pursuit of virtues and the common good are synonymous with one another. That said, Lorenzetti differs to a degree in that he identifies the common good as an emergent result, while Cicero inversely views acting in the interest of the common good as a means to harmonious ends. Therefore, in Lorenzetti’s allegories, both executives are emergent properties that reveal themselves as resulting from their surrounding structures. The common good is a goal, not a guideline, and should the Nine attain it, it will be by being attentive to the virtues, forming the loop that produces the common good as its byproduct. On the other hand, tyranny is far from a goal, but is a natural product of poor and malicious governance, one that breaks the bones and spirits of those under it, who mutter “tyrant” to one another until the descriptor sticks.
2 A blend of monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy developed from ideas of Greek thinkers like Aristotle.
With the intellectual context of the piece established, we can now take a closer look at the Allegories themselves, starting with the unique emblematic character of Peace. Reclining upon a set of armor which has long oxidized and darkened through lack of use, one might argue that Peace is an emergent property of her own, a natural result of virtuous governance. Yet given her size, scale, and position in relation to the rest of the seated figures, I’m inclined to argue that she occupies the same centripetal loop as the other virtues, and is instead part of the means rather than an end. Peace is akin to a specialist species who occupies just one particular environment, which in this case is a political one where public servants attend to the virtues with diligence and respect. If they entertain vice instead, Peace dons her armor and flees the scene, as she has in the Bad Allegory– perhaps on her way to stave off the effects of wicked governance! She is not an emergent property here, but instead another emphasis that rulers must pay attention to when deciding how to govern. She’s a key component in the ecosystem, as important to attend to as any virtue, and she removes her armor because the Executive rules with peace kept in mind. Should the Executive become a tyrant and cause conflict with the people, Peace will don her armor once more, and the scene will fragment.
Meanwhile, on the left side of the Good Allegory fresco, a separate story is taking place: the story of exergy and power flows and the answer to “whence authority?”. Justice is repeated, appearing a second time, set apart from the rest of the scene. The aforementioned inscription mentions elsewhere that “This holy virtue [Justice], where she rules, induces to unity the many souls [of citizens], and they, gathered together for such a purpose, make the Common Good [ben comune] their Lord…” It is evident that Lorenzetti considers her to be the most important political virtue. In ecosystemic terms, we might consider her a keystone species, for without her the other political virtues could not operate, and Concord would be unable to pass down the cord
that holds the Executive in check. Within the autocatalytic loop on the right side of the fresco, where attention to one virtue begets attention to another and so on, Justice occupies the functional role of a node inside the larger loop positioned around the Executive. By repeating her presence elsewhere, Lorenzetti comments on Justice as a central player within the system, making her double presence not redundant, but rather an emphasis. She must be there twice in order for Lorenzetti to demonstrate her two roles: the first as an important position in the virtues’ guiding autocatalytic loop (rightmost), and the other as an indispensable player that facilitates the flow of exergy to the people (leftmost).
The key factor in this assessment is the placement of Justice’s head, tilted upwards, seeking the guidance of Wisdom, who occupies the highest tier of the fresco. This indicates that this is the same Wisdom granted divinely by God for which countless Proverbs are written. If, as we’ve established, highest-tier characters represent external (from God) factors, then Justice here plays a role similar to that of a producer, who gathers light from the sun and converts it to energy that can be passed up the trophic pyramid. She plays her role in the larger system, but without her production of energy, the rest of the system cannot function. The flow of energy still moves from the top of the hierarchy downwards, from Wisdom to Justice to Concord, who weaves a physical cord so that it can be grasped by the populace and passed to the Executive, who by taking the cord takes on the role of the Common Good. The idea that Concord is the link between Justice and the connection between the ruler(s) and the ruled brings to the modern mind the concept of a social contract which Lorenzetti may be seen as an early proponent of, although the social contract as we know it came much later with enlightenment theorists like Thomas Hobbes and John Locke.
One philosopher who many interpreters mistakenly identified as a key influence on Lorenzetti was Thomas Aquinas, but there are a number of disagreements between the two thinkers in how figures are represented. Returning for a moment to Peace, Aquinas thought peace was a passive absence of discord, but Lorenzetti has identified it as an intentional orienting force that must be addressed in order to stave off chaos. We might make an apt allusion to an ecosystem functioning on the edge of chaos, because in Lorenzetti’s ideal political environment, peace is just one of many necessary active pursuits to avoid the discord that comes from letting virtue fall by the wayside. Another interesting diversion comes in both thinkers’ representations of Charity and Concord; where Aquinas saw the former as a direct source for the latter, Lorenzetti shows the two figures in separate spheres of the fresco, both acting as related but distant steps in the process of good governance. It’s clear that Lorenzetti valued Charity a great deal, as it is the highest (literally) theological virtue acting as an external factor. Yet unlike Aquinas, Lorenzetti doesn’t view it as a driving force, the equivalent of the sun in this parallelized ecosystem. That honor belongs to Wisdom, who passes its guidance down through Justice to Concord, who hands the exergy off to the people. Therefore, according to Lorenzetti, charity is not a productive force that allows for the conditions of concord. Instead, concord is a means that results from proper attunement of justice to divine wisdom.
Turning to the Bad Allegory for contrast, we see that its system is dysfunctional because there is no flow of exergy. The leftmost part of the fresco is intentionally not mirrored; Wisdom is nowhere to be found, and Justice is out of commission at the bottom-most tier of the fresco, unable to provide the populace with the cord with which to control the Executive. This means that no flow of Wisdom, our allegories’ equivalent to exergy, can occur. Any potential energy that once existed in this system has been sequestered by Tyranny, and although the people have
no power, Tyranny cannot receive any more because the chain is broken. We can presume that at some point Wisdom did play a role, given that Justice, who channels Wisdom, appears to have been defeated at some point in the timeline. But the days of Wisdom’s rule are long past, and the present conditions show that the Bad Allegory system is stuck in a poverty trap. There is low connectedness between the Executive, the people, and Justice, low potential due to Wisdom’s absence by Justice’s inability to act, and low resilience, which we can glean from the practical dysfunction of the crumbling city in the Effects of Bad Government fresco.
With the lens of a process ecologist, we can naturalize Lorenzetti’s theories, holding them up to the light of environmental systems and finding the similarities and differences. The Allegories are an amalgamation of many allegories, inadvertent allusions to the natural world that justify the growth and propagation of systems we know and understand instinctively, even if we now apply a new set of vocabulary. The merism of good governance that uses Common Good as the end and Virtues as the means is told by two separate narratives that we now identify and track through nature and packaged to the Nine– the people who needed to hear these stories most. Whether Lorenzetti’s parallels with the natural world justify his theories more or less is up to the observer, but they are fascinating to explore nonetheless.
Works Cited
Gunderson, L. H., & Holling, C. S. (Eds.). (2002). Panarchy: Understanding transformations in human and natural systems. Island Press.
Jorgensen, S. E. (Ed.). (2009). Ecosystem ecology. Elsevier.
Lorenzetti, A. (1338). The Allegory of Good and Bad Government Palazzo Pubblico, Siena, Italy.
Rubinstein, N. (1958). Political ideas in Sienese art: The frescoes by Ambrogio Lorenzetti and
Taddeo di Bartolo in the palazzo pubblico. Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 21(3-4), 179–207. https://doi.org/10.2307/750823
Ulanowicz, R.E. Process Ecology: Philosophy Passes into Praxis
Hothouse 
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