Abstract

The grill of the chapel in the Palazzo Pubblico of Siena represents one of the most interesting monumental ironwork made in Italy between Middle Ages and Renaissance. Its exceptionality lies in several aspects: the feat is mentioned in a big number of documents about order and payment of the work, showing an extraordinary turnover of blacksmiths; eleven years passed between the commissioning of the project and the last payment; we can identify, for the first time in the history of Italian ironwork, distinct masters for plan and execution; in the end, the original project was probably given by Jacopo della Quercia. The article means to have a look to the documents and to put the grill, and the masters at work on it, in the context of the production of decorative ironwork in Siena in the XV century.