Art gothic (Effects of good government)

8/26/25 week 2

discussion topic #1

  1. allegory is defined as “figures that stand in for ideas.” They discussed above the door was figures that make a good government and those figures were personifications of justice and wisdom.

  2. The video explains that the city will grow and flourish. The lands are depicted as bountiful and the city streets are full of people living happily. In the video it is described as one of the first paintings to view utopia modern centered with a beautiful city and people at the helm of its control compared to paintings before where the ideal image was just nature.

  3. For the effects of bad government the main figure is tyranny. Tyranny rules and creates the lives of the people harder and the figures that join tyranny are war, fury, cruelty, treason and fraud. And now, The city is no longer flourishing. The city is empty and crumbling and rampant with crime. Beside the city is a new shot of the fields from before but they are no longer beautiful. Instead, the picture is much darker and shows that the land has most likely been burned and above it is the figure of terror.

    Part two:

  4. I would like to see more activities that we could center around. Its a small town so there isn’t much to do and i personally feel because of that, theres a lack of community. My ideal town like siennas portrait would be a big town square with stuff people of all ages could partake in.

  5. I would want justice, peace, charity and maybe empathy as an added figure to be in a meeting room for my city council.

  6. Justice because people deserve to feel safe knowing that justice will always serve them well. Peace because the town i live in has many conflicts that end in violence. Charity because not everyone has the same leverage of opportunity and empathy because we lack the community to understand each other and share kindness to one another from time to time.

  7. “the plague of Florence” it was a plague that came from ships traveling from Kaffa to Italy and killed 80,000 people within a short amount of time.

  8. I think its different from the pieces we’ve studied before because it may be the largest painting so far with a very vast background. The paintings before this where religious and crowded with people. Not only that but it doesn’t have one big aspect of the byzantine style which is the gold background. neither do I see signs of religious messaging being the main focus but what I do see is gold tone shading and tilted faces.

  1. I think its still relevant today because we still struggle with government and power imbalances. I believe this to be true currently in the U.S. If we valued art the same way the people in siena did back then we could use the lessons from artists to think a little more about the politics critically from different perspectives.