that some
of the best of our buildings in any large city should be those
intended for the sick and the poor of the community. The city must
respond nobly to its civic duties. The idea, however, came so
naturally to the medieval mind that apparently there was no question
about it. Only in very recent years has come the additional thought
that these buildings must be appropriately decorated, and that the
work of the greatest artists of the time can have no better place for
its display than the walls of a hospital or a great charitable
institution. Bartolo's frescoes, on the walls of the hospital at
Siena, tell the story of the work that was done for foundlings and
pilgrims as well as for {271} the sick in the early days of its
establishment. The first picture of the series represents the baptism
of the children that had been picked up and brought to the hospital.

It is characteristic of the times, too, that one of the greatest
pictures on the hospital walls is not something that makes for the
glory of the trustees or the founders, nor that is some fancy of the
painter, some study of myth or landscape, in which he might have been
especially interested. Probably the masterpiece of the old painters is
the Scala del Paradiso (the stairs to heaven), by Vecchietta. The
picture was evidently painted for the department of the foundlings,
and its subject is the ascent of these little children to heaven and
their welcome by the angels and saints and by the Heavenly Father. A
more inspiring vision to be impressed upon the minds of these growing
children who had been abandoned by their own, and who must have felt
all of their loneliness in spite of their favorable surroundings,
could scarcely have been imagined.

The dedication of the hospital is expressed in terms very typical of
the Middle Ages, or as they might better be called, "The Ages of
Faith." It reminds one of the formal terms of wills, as they used to
be worded in olden times: "In the Name of God, Amen. To the honor,
praise and reverence of God and of His Mother, Madonna, Holy Mary
Virgin, and of all the saints of God, and to the honor and exaltation
of Holy Mother Church and of the Commune and of the people of the city
of Siena, and to its good and pacific state, and to the increase of
the Hospital of Madonna, Holy Mary Virgin, of Siena, which is placed
in front of the chief church of the city, and to the recreation of the
sick and {272} the foundlings of the said hos