Why go
The hospital commissioned leading artists including Simone Martini and the Lorenzetti brothers, but the former facade cycle no longer survives. That absence makes its records meaningful, while interior painting and altarpieces show how art served worship and charity inside the complex. Look for subjects tied to the Virgin and the hospital's patrons.
The full story
In the fourteenth century, Santa Maria della Scala commissioned paintings for both its public face and its interior. Documents connect the lost facade frescoes with Simone Martini and Pietro and Ambrogio Lorenzetti. Scenes from the early life of the Virgin also reflected the hospital's devotion to Mary and her parents, Joachim and Anne. The facade works disappeared, so their importance has to be understood through the surviving record rather than by searching the walls for them. Interior commissions and altarpieces tell another part of the story. Bartolommeo Bulgarini was among the painters associated with the hospital after the Black Death. The Reliquary Shutters of Andrea Gallerani depict a benefactor welcoming pilgrims, a subject that joins religious imagery to the institution's care for travellers. This is why the art reads differently here than in a picture gallery: it was made for a working place of worship and assistance.