Hermes Trismegistus and the Sibyls on the Floor of Siena Cathedral

Whoever enters Siena Cathedral walks, perhaps unknowingly, upon one of the largest works of art of the Italian Renaissance. The cathedral floor is made up of dozens of panels in inlaid and engraved marble, created between the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries by different artists. Right at the threshold of the central nave, in a place of honour, appears a figure unexpected in a Christian church: Hermes Trismegistus, the Egyptian sage to whom the Renaissance attributed a most ancient wisdom.

A pagan sage at the entrance

The Hermes panel is attributed to Giovanni di Stefano and dated 1488. The sage, with a long beard and an oriental headdress, holds out an open book to two figures, one in oriental dress and the other in an attitude of respect. An inscription presents him as a contemporary of Moses, in line with the widespread opinion of the time. In the book one reads an invitation to the Egyptians to receive letters and laws.

Beside it, a tablet supported by sphinxes carries a passage from the Hermetic writings, which speaks of a creator God who generates a second, visible god. For Christian readers of the time, this text seemed to announce the Son. Placing Hermes at the entrance was therefore not a provocation but the expression of the idea, dear to Ficino and his friends, of a pagan wisdom that prepared the way for revelation.

The ten Sibyls

Along the side aisles follow ten panels dedicated to the Sibyls, executed mostly in 1482 and 1483 by different artists, from the Delphic to the Tiburtine, the latter linked to Tivoli. Their number derives from the list of the Roman scholar Varro, handed down by the Christian writer Lactantius, who had taken it up to argue that pagan prophetesses too had announced Christ.

Each Sibyl holds a scroll with a prophetic text, and some are accompanied by books or symbols. Set beside Hermes, they form a true figurative programme: pagan antiquity, Egyptian and Graeco-Roman, appears as a vestibule of the Christian faith. It is one of the most complete expressions in Italy of the ancient theology dear to the humanists.

The Hill of Wisdom

Between 1504 and 1505 Pinturicchio designed for the floor the panel known as the Allegory of the Hill of Wisdom. A group of men, landed on a rocky island, try to climb to the summit, where Wisdom is seated. Fortune, naked, balances a sail above a sphere and a boat. At the top the philosopher Socrates receives a palm, while Crates throws his jewels into the sea, renouncing wealth.

The image, rich in references to ancient philosophy, represents the toil of the path towards virtue, hindered by the whims of fortune. To protect it from wear, the floor remains covered for most of the year and is fully uncovered only for a few weeks, usually between late summer and autumn, when all the panels can be admired together.

The floor of Siena Cathedral is a book of stone to be read while walking. Hermes, the Sibyls and the Hill of Wisdom bear witness to a moment when Christian culture sought to welcome the wisdom of the ancients, imagining the history of human thought as a single long ascent towards truth.