Hermes Trismegistus on the pavement of Siena Cathedral: the sage at the door
At the entrance to Siena Cathedral an Egyptian sage greets the faithful: the inlay of Hermes Trismegistus, the Sibyls and the Hill of Wisdom.
Whoever enters through the central portal of Siena Cathedral, during the periods when the pavement is uncovered, finds an unexpected figure. An old man in a wide cloak and an oriental headdress hands an open book to two figures, while with his other hand he rests on an inscribed tablet. The inscription identifies him as Hermes Mercurius Trismegistus and calls him a contemporary of Moses. It is the first image the cathedral offers its visitors.
A pavement of two centuries
The pavement of Siena Cathedral is an extraordinary work made between the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries with the techniques of marble inlay and graffito, setting marbles of different colours side by side and incising details with lines filled with dark stucco. Dozens of artists worked on it, among them Domenico Beccafumi, who in the sixteenth century designed the great stories of Elijah and Moses. The scenes, mostly protected by coverings, are shown in full only at certain times of the year.
The sage who came from Egypt
The inlay of Hermes is dated 1488 and is attributed to the design of Giovanni di Stefano. The book the sage offers bears an invitation to the Egyptians to receive letters and laws, while the tablet behind him carries a passage speaking of God the creator and his Son, drawn from the Asclepius, one of the texts attributed to Hermes. The two figures receiving the book have been interpreted as representatives of East and West.
A few years earlier, in 1463, Marsilio Ficino had translated the Corpus Hermeticum into Latin for Cosimo de' Medici; it was printed in 1471. The humanists regarded Hermes as an extremely ancient sage who had glimpsed Christian truths before Christ. Placing him at the entrance of a cathedral meant presenting him as one of the first witnesses of revelation, a forerunner of the faith.
The Sibyls and the Hill of Wisdom
Along the side aisles follow ten Sibyls, made in the 1480s: the Delphic, the Cumaean, the Erythraean, the Persian, the Libyan and others, each with an inscription giving one of her prophecies interpreted as an announcement of Christ. Together with Hermes they form a chorus of pagan voices which, in the vision of the time, had prepared the world for Christianity.
A little further on lies the allegorical scene known as the Hill of Wisdom, designed by Pinturicchio and dated 1505. A group of men lands on a rocky island and climbs towards Wisdom, seated at the top, while unstable Fortune, balancing between a sphere and a boat, remains below. On the summit appear Socrates and the Cynic philosopher Crates, who throws away his riches.
The pavement of Siena is thus a path of knowledge: from the hermetic and prophetic wisdom of the entrance one arrives, moving towards the altar, at the stories of the Old Testament and finally at the heart of the Christian liturgy. There is nothing secret or heretical here, but a grand idea of the continuity of human knowledge, characteristic of humanism, written in marble beneath the feet of the faithful and offered to anyone with the patience to read it.