Santa Maria dei Servi

Photo by Sailko.

San Clemente in Santa Maria dei Servi is a Romanesque church with lovely altarpieces in Siena

This cavernous Romanesque church at the ege of town with the rough brick anti-facade was built in the 13th century (though renovated in the 15th and 16th centuries) and contains some lovely alatrpieces from every era of Sienese painting, from Byzantine and Gothic through Renaisance and baroque.

Among the best works:

Madonna del Bordone, Coppo di Marcovaldo (1261)
• A seven-foot Madonna del Bordone by Byzantine master Coppo di Marcovaldo painted in 1261 with the typical Byzantine almond eyes, spoon nose, and levitating midget Jesus, but notice how the gold cross-hatchings in the deep blue and red robes have a bit of curve and grace to them when compared to the usual ruler-straight angled starbursts of typical Byzantine golded hatchings.
• Taddeo di Bartoldo's late Gothic Nativity/Adoration of the Shepherds (1404).
• A Madonna with Child by Duccio.
• A maginifcent Massacre of the Innocents by Matteo di Giovanni (1491).
• Rutilio Manetti's baroque Birth of the Virgin in the third chapel on the right.
• A trio of works by Sienese Gothic great Pietro Lorenzetti: another Massacre of the Innocents, Feast of Herod, and Life of St. John the Evangelist.

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