“Siena: City of the Virgin Lactans”
Beth Williamson

The devotion of Siena to the Virgin Mary is well-known. It designated itself as the Civitas Virginis, and held fast to the notion of the Virgin’s miraculous protection of the city in the crucial 13^th-century battle of Montaperti. The large number of altarpieces and images of the Virgin commissioned by the ecclesiastical and civic authorities, and the urban mendicant houses, all attest to this fervent civic devotion. But one type of Virgin image—the suckling Virgin, or Virgin Lactans—seems to have been particularly popular in Siena. This paper will examine the ways in which the city’s self-image as a favoured child of the Virgin, suckling at her breast alongside the Christ Child, dovetails with the city’s foundation myth, related to the Roman myth of the twins, Romulus and Remus, suckled by the she-wolf. In addition, the origins of the so-called Madonna of Humility (the Virgin seated on the ground) will be considered afresh. This image (wherein the Virgin often suckles the child) is usually said to have been invented by the pre-eminent Sienese painter, Simone Martini, during the second quarter of the fourteenth century, in Siena. The Madonna of Humility image will be re-examined, with the consideration of the possible importance of other artists and patrons in the development of this profoundly influential image.