Abstract

In the church of San Domenico in Siena, there survive two works painted by Sodoma for the Confraternity of the Rosary. In the center of the first work, a so-called "picture tabernacle," is embedded a medieval Virgin with Child, and beneath the icon is depicted the northern area of the city called Camollia. Additionally, the predella representing the Fifteen Mysteries of the Rosary is attached to it. Thus, this icon protecting Camollia is transformed into the Virgin of the Rosary. The second painting is a processional banner representing the Assumption of the Virgin. Around her, a crowd of angels is scattering roses over Camollia depicted at the lower left. These works were painted shortly after the Battle of Camollia of 1526, fought by the Florentine and the Sienese who won. Sienese a people attributed this "miraculous" victory to the Immaculate Conception, a mystery over which the Franciscans and the Dominicans had held a series of intense disputes. By situating the representation of Camollia under the Virgin of the Rosary , the Dominicans probably tried to claim that it was in fact thanks to the Virgin of the Rosary that Siena won, and to divert people's piety from the Immaculate Conception