The long association of intarsia with perspective and illusionistic still life has, perhaps, overshadowed an independent and earlier tradition centred not on the geometry of an inan- imate world ordered by the laws of perspective, but on the figure depicted with a technical refinement rivalling the subtleties of silverpoint drawing.'1 This tradition was the creation of Sienese rather than Florentine craftsmen and makes its debut in the fourteenth-century choir-stalls of Orvieto cathedral, which not only introduced figurative intarsia but established a level of craftsmanship only occasionally equalled in later works (see the accompanying article by Antoine Wilmering on p.387 below). It reached its apogee in the work of the celebrated sculptor/woodworker Domenico di Niccolo (c. 1363-1450/53), whose choir-stalls in the Cappella de' Signori of the Palazzo Pubblico, Siena (Fig.2), earned him the epithet 'dei con', and of Mattia di Nanni di Stefano, called Bernacchino (1403-33), whose key documented commission, an intarsia bench that for four centuries stood beneath Simone Martini's great Maesta in the council chamber of the Palazzo Pubblico, has, until now, been known only from documents and cryptic later descriptions. Miraculously, parts of Mattia's bench - dismantled in 1809 and subsequently dispersed - have reappeared (Figs. 10, 11, 12 and 13), making it possible for the first time to come to terms with this extraordinary master of the woodjoiner's craft. The recovery of these fragments also provides an opportunity to reconsider the character of the decorative projects undertaken by the newly reformed communal government of Siena following the death of Giangaleazzo Visconti in 1402.

The four magnificent panels from the bench of the Sienese Signoria (Figs. 10, 11, 12 and 13), identified by Keith Christiansen and the present author as documented works by Mattia di Nanni, mark the climax of intarsia making in Siena, an art developed and refined over a period of more than a century. They also bear eloquent testimony to the assertion of the most famous Sienese woodworker, Domenico di Niccolo, that Mattia was his one pupil who had excelled. Indeed, the panels demonstrate that the pupil surpassed his master in both technical execution and artistic expression. An appreciation of the achievements of these two intarsiatori must be approached through an understanding of the craft as it developed in Orvieto as well as Siena, for it was in the choir-stalls of Orvieto cathedral, largely carried out under the direction of Sienese masters, that figurative intarsia makes its first appearance.'