QUERCIA, Jacopo della
(b. ca. 1367, Quercia Grossa, d. 1438, Siena)

Wisdom

1414-19
Marble
Santa Maria della Scala, Siena

The interior of the walls of the Fonte Gaia is decorated with shallow niches containing large-scale figures in high relief of the Virgin and Child, flanked by Angels and by the Theological and Cardinal Virtues and Wisdom, plus scenes of the Creation of Adam and the Expulsion from the Garden and at the corners, as originally planned, the Rhea Silvia and the Acca Larentia.

The heavy, decorative drapery of the Virtues echoes the reliefs of the Liberal Arts formerly decorating the base of the Cappella di Piazza immediately across the Campo from the Fonte Gaia.

The picture shows Wisdom.




© Web Gallery of Art, created by Emil Krén and Daniel Marx.