Esthetic Bureaucrats

To 20th Century taxpayers, one of the world's least esthetic individuals is the faceless Moloch known to them only by his title, the Collector of Internal Revenue. But officials in the art-loving, 13th Century Italian republic of Siena were tax collectors of a different sort. When the camarlingo (chamberlain) completed his six months' term, he had his parchment records bound between two wooden panels, and commissioned some of the republic's most eminent artists to decorate the covers with tempera paintings. In Florence's Strozzina Gallery last week, some examples of such fancied-up account books were on public display for the first time.

More than a hundred of these tavolette had been recovered from Siena's archives. Many of them were portraits of the camarlinghi themselves seated stiffly at broad desks with their secretaries. But later samples included fragments of the brilliantly colored, elaborately detailed painting of Siena's prime: virgins with patterned golden haloes, battle scenes, street scenes. Among the anonymous panels on exhibit, experts thought they could distinguish the work of such important Sienese artists as Taddeo di Bartolo, Stefano di Giovanni Sassetta and Ambrozio Lorenzetti.

By last week the show had made such a hit with Italian critics and gallerygoers that museums in five other European countries had already asked to have a look at it when the panels go on tour next month.

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