biccherne
Nota de aplicación
Small painted wooden panels (and later, canvases) created as the covers for official documents of the Biccherna, the finance ministry of Siena between the thirteenth and eighteenth centuries. At some point in their history, the covers, which typically portrayed scenes of office life, were detached from their documents and treated as paintings which were hung on the office walls. Only 136 of these painted covers have been preserved.