Submission of the Castle of Giuncarico

Restorers working in Siena's town hall around 1980 uncovered this fresco in the room called the Sala del Mappamondo. The city's records mention a painting of the surrender of Giuncarico, a castle down in the Maremma that gave itself up to Siena in 1314, and the fragment appears to be it. Who painted it is argued over. The proposal that made it famous gives it to Duccio, the leading painter in the city at the time, while others have put forward Memmo di Filippuccio, or the young Pietro Lorenzetti. Running across the surface are wide circular grooves. They were cut by a revolving painted map of Siena's territory that Ambrogio Lorenzetti set on this wall in 1345. The map turned on its pivot, wore away what lay behind it, gave the room the name it still has, and has itself been lost.