The Game of Courting and the Art of the Commune of San Gimignano, 1290-1320

This text explores the sources and significance of the erotic frescoes adorning a chamber in San Gimignano's communal bell tower by constructing an interdisciplinary microhistory of an early Italian commune. The investigation addresses notions of nobility, personal display and public space, describing how the game of courting coloured urban life in the age of Dante. The book considers the imagery of San Gimignano not primarily as an illustration of political theory, but rather as a manifestation of a vibrant poetic culture that was politically engaged. The author identifies a point of tension in the banning of a popular game that originated in courtly pastimes and involved the exchange of love tokens and role reversals in which women became the aggressors. She argues that, while the commune attempted to suppress this game when it appeared spontanesouly and outside its proper ritual context, civic leaders embraced those aspects of a larger courtly game that lent their commune nobility and vigour. They, like leaders elsewhere in Italy, imagined the sovereignty of their commune in the space where the private world of courtly ceremony met the public realm of the commune.