It’s diffcult to imagine a modern world without the two institutions—universities and hospitals—which, by the early Middle Ages, were already contributing substantially to the shaping of civilized society in Christian and Islamic cultures alike (libraries came earlier and museums lagged far behind). Care of the sick was a sacred duty strongly felt by adherents of both religions, and in this spirit a pious merchant from Amalfi founded a hospital for Christian pilgrims to Jerusalem, an institution that survives to this day as the worldwide Order of St. John. Two centuries earlier the quasi-mythical Blessed Sorore, a cobbler from Siena, began what was eventually to become the Ospedale di Santa Maria della Scala (Saint Mary’s of the Stair), so named for its position across from the grand steps leading to the Duomo. The institution expanded during the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries, continually enriched with architectural and painted embellishments. Until the late 1960s, the hospital’s main ward, with its magnificent fifteenth-century frescoes by Lorenzo di Pietro (“Vecchietta”) (1412–1480) and Domenico di Bartolo (c. 1400/04–1445/47), was still home to crowded rows of bedridden patients. Once Siena finally got its modern new hospital, the ancient and cavernous complex of buildings underwent a brilliantly executed renovation, transforming it into an attractive and sleekly effcient exhibition/museum facility. The “new” Santa Maria della Scala has already hosted a number of important initiatives, memorable among them the 2003 exhibition devoted to Duccio di Buoninsegna, the fourteenth-century fountainhead of Sienese painting.

A sweeping recent