Massa Marittima mural

Massa Marittima mural
Tree of Fertility
Artist	Unknown
Year	Second half of the 13th century
Medium	fresco
Subject	Phallus tree
Location	Massa Marittima

The Massa Marittima mural is a 13th-century fresco located on the rear wall of the Fonte dell’Abbondanza, a public fountain in the Tuscan town of Massa Marittima. Often called the “Tree of Fertility,” the image features a large tree bearing numerous phalluses, surrounded by women and black birds. Positioned on a civic structure in a public space, the mural has attracted scholarly attention for its unusual subject matter and ambiguous meaning.

Scholars have offered many interpretations, including political satire, fertility imagery, moral messaging, and signs of factional conflict. Others have placed it within the broader traditions of public art in medieval Italian cities, connecting it to ideas about gender, civic identity, and social control.  

Today, the mural is seen as an important example of how art in the Duecento (13th-century) combined politics, symbolism, and public display.

Historical context

During the late thirteenth century, Massa Marittima, like many other Italian communes, was shaped by an unstable political environment defined by factional rivalry and institutional change. Across the Italian peninsula, local governments known as popolo regimes were rising in opposition to older elite structures. These shifts were often entangled with the broader conflict between Guelphs, who aligned with the papacy, and Ghibellines, who supported imperial authority. While some communes, including Massa Marittima, temporarily aligned with the Ghibelline faction, imperial power was declining in practical influence during this period. Although suzerainty remained a formal presence, local actors increasingly framed their authority around the ideal of Italian liberty and independence from outside control.

In Massa Marittima, the mural's placement near the Fonte dell'Abbondanza has been linked by scholars to broader political realignment in the city. While the fountain itself was constructed during a period of Ghibelline rule, possibly under the administration of Ildebrandino Malcondime, the mural is generally believed to have been painted later, after the Guelphs had taken control of the city. The presence of the imperial eagles in the mural has sparked debate: some interpret them as visual references to earlier Ghibelline influence in the area, while others see them as part of a Guelph effort to satirize or critique their political rivals. Despite reforms aimed at broadening political access, governing power in most communes remained concentrated. During this period, authority was increasingly monopolized by a small group of elite families, even as institutional reforms suggested wider civic participation.

Ghibelline Emblem.

Throughout the thirteenth century, communal governments in cities like Massa Marittima and Siena promoted civic identity rooted in the language of liberty and self-rule. Local leaders framed their authority as a defense of communal independence, often in contrast to external domination by papal or imperial powers. As Navone explains, the idea of “Italian liberty” functioned as both a political justification and a cultural ideal, linking urban autonomy with collective moral purpose. This ideological language was not merely rhetorical; it found visual expression in large-scale civic projects such as fountains, palaces, and cathedrals, which reshaped urban space and conveyed messages of order and legitimacy. Ferente similarly notes that republican governments used such projects to assert the sovereignty of civic institutions, casting public architecture and art as visible markers of political identity. In Florence, the built environment served to naturalize the presence of government and reinforce a sense of shared civic belonging, even in moments of intense internal conflict. These visual and spatial strategies helped transform the ideal of liberty into a daily, observable reality for urban populations.

Beneath these ideological claims, however, communal governance was marked by structural exclusions and internal tensions. While many communes developed complex bureaucracies that separated the legislative and executive functions, actual political participation remained limited. The councils and executive officials of most Italian communes were selected through restrictive procedures, which tended to exclude women, the poor, and the clergy, even as the number of office-holders expanded. Tensions between magnates and popolani (common people) often shaped the very design of communal institutions, with reforms aimed at balancing elite rivalry rather than empowering broader publics. In many cases, ruling families adapted the language of republicanism to preserve their own dominance. Elite factions across northern and central Italy increasingly monopolized access to offices, using patronage and factional alliances to manage internal political instability. Even where there were elements of dynamism within elite groups, the broader trend was a steady concentration of power into the hands of smaller coalitions, often at the expense of guilds and popular institutions. Longenbach similarly argues that even rhetorical appeals to liberty were often embedded in systems of coercion and exclusion, particularly in Siena, where the language of communal independence and freedom coexisted with factional violence and social control. These contradictions between civic ideals and political realities were fundamental to the functioning of communal rule in the Duecento.

While political participation in Italian communes was limited by class and gender, the structure of government also allowed for a relatively broad and shifting base of officeholders among eligible men. Communal institutions explicitly excluded women, the clergy, and members of the laboring classes, except during moments of revolutionary or populist upheaval. At the same time, the rules governing short term lengths and restrictions on immediate re-election created a large and rotating political class. In Florence, by the end of the 14th century, over 6,000 men had been nominated for office, and more than 2,000 had served. This framework did foster some degree of social mobility, as new families regularly entered political life, especially during the later Duecento and Trecento periods. The communal ideal of civic participation, while far from universal or inclusive, was enacted through a controlled but relatively diverse participating group of citizens.

Description of the mural

The fresco's visual composition

The mural, also sometimes referred to as the “Tree of Fertility,” is painted on the rear wall of the Fonte dell’Abbondanza, a civic fountain in Massa Marittima that dates to ~1265. Originally called the Fonte Nuova, the fountain was renamed and later restored in 2000, at which point the fresco was uncovered after having been concealed for centuries. The mural occupies a prominent position on the left interior wall and depicts a large, leafy deciduous tree as its central element. Suspended from the tree’s branches are approximately twenty-five exaggerated phalluses, most shown with testicles and depicted in an aroused state. These forms are distributed symmetrically across the tree, drawing attention to their repetitive and highly stylized appearance.

Beneath the tree, a group of eight discernible female figures engage with the imagery in various ways, with some appearing to reach toward the branches, and others standing in conversation or gesturing toward each other. One figure is described as frantically combing the tree for a phallus, in contrast to the more composed poses of her companions. Interspersed around the tree are five black birds, four on the left and one on the right, adding a further layer of symbolic or narrative ambiguity to the scene. The striking and fantastical subject matter, combined with the mural’s civic setting, has prompted continued scholarly analysis of its form, function, and meaning.

Public placement and civic visibility

The location of the mural within Massa Marittima’s civic center suggests that it was deliberately designed for public visibility and interpretation. Painted on the inner wall of the Fonte dell’Abbondanza, the fresco faced a busy square where five main roads converged, near the palazzo comunale and the town’s cathedral. Its placement within this central space made it accessible to a broad segment of the population, including residents, visitors, and officials alike. Longenbach notes that the rear wall of the fountain, where the mural is situated, was a highly frequented area and likely chosen to maximize exposure to the fresco. In addition to serving as a water source, the fountain and its decorative program were integrated into the fabric of civic life, both practically and symbolically. The imagery of the phallus tree emerged directly from the fountain’s left pool, linking the mural to the structure’s role in provisioning the city.

The integration of art and public architecture in this context reflects broader patterns of medieval guide culture and urban mediation. Rudolph emphasizes that religious and civic institutions often used visual imagery to fulfill their social responsibilities to inform, instruct, or morally guide their viewers. The fountain, like other monumental projects of the period, thus functioned not only as infrastructure but also as a platform for collective meaning-making. Its visual elements, including the mural, were likely intended to be interpreted by a wide and varied audience, reinforcing shared civic values through imagery placed, quite literally, at the center of public life.

Interpretations

Visual culture and moral symbolism

Fertility, sin, and social order

One interpretation of the Massa Marittima mural views it as a visual expression of communal concern over fertility, morality, and social order. The prominent display of phalluses, especially in connection with the fountain’s water supply, has led some scholars to identify the mural as a fertility image. Mattelaer suggests that the tree and its exaggerated sexual imagery were symbolic of regenerative forces, paralleling the life-giving properties of the fountain itself. In this reading, the mural served as a ritual or protective function, reinforcing the community’s dependence on water, reproduction, and agricultural abundance.

Other scholars, however, emphasize a shift in meaning within Christian culture, where the symbols of the phallus and the serpent came to represent sin and moral corruption. Longenbach argues that by the thirteenth century, these elements could no longer be understood as purely apotropaic; instead, they were associated with temptation, evil, and spiritual danger. From this perspective, the mural may have acted as a public warning against sexual deviance or social disorder, using grotesque imagery to reinforce communal values and regulate behavior. Whether viewed as a protective symbol or a moral admonition, the fresco’s sexual excess has been interpreted as a deliberate tool of communal messaging.

Public art and civic identity

The mural fits within a broader tradition of civic visual culture in Italian communes, where public art played a vital role in shaping communal values and identity. Artworks in civic buildings and urban spaces frequently communicated political ideals, moral expectations, or shared social narratives. In Siena, for example, Lorenzetti’s Allegory of Good and Bad Government offered a comprehensive visual model of civic order, illustrating how harmony and prosperity were linked to good rule, while chaos and ruin followed from tyranny. These public images functioned not only as decoration, but as tools of governance. Such representations shaped civic behavior by visually dramatizing the duties of rulers and the virtues of disciplined citizenship. The mural, while unusual in subject matter, operated within the same ideological framework, serving as a public visual expression of communal values, anxieties, and ideals.

Longenbach interprets the mural as a symbolic condensation of the town’s beliefs and concerns, drawing on classical and Christian traditions to reflect the tensions of its civic identity. Hoch similarly situates the mural within a category of secular wall painting rarely preserved today, arguing that it reveals how profane imagery was integrated into civic life for purposes beyond ornamentation. Though the mural is sexually explicit, it is not necessarily anomalous; it participates in a tradition where visual messages about morality, authority, and the body were embedded into civic architecture and viewed as part of public discourse.

Mediation, audience, and symbolic architecture

The mural’s setting on the rear wall of a public fountain further reinforced its role as a civic message. In the medieval Italian commune, fountains were not only essential infrastructure, but carefully designed expressions of urban identity. Waley and Dean describe how city councils developed elaborate “fountains policies” that prioritized embellishment, access, and symbolic meaning, often tying the abundance of water to the success of governance itself. Hoch argues that by placing the phallus tree directly above the fountain’s water basin, the association between fertility, reproduction, and civic prosperity became both visual and literal, especially for the women who frequented the fountain. Mattelaer connects this symbolism to ancient Tuscan traditions linking water and fertility, suggesting the imagery drew on long-standing regional associations.

These visual programs also depended on public interaction and shared interpretation. A continuity of guide culture, linking classical, Christian, and medieval practices, meant that public art played an ongoing role in social instruction, often substituting for written texts in a largely illiterate population. Smith echoes this view, proposing that the mural may have functioned as a communal reference point, a kind of civic “water cooler” where residents gathered to discuss public life and moral norms. Even objects and spaces shaped by gendered access were increasingly recognized as part of civic messaging. Architectural studies have traced the deliberate design of urban zones to reflect gendered roles and expectations, suggesting that such visual cues were part of the larger ideological order. The mural, situated at the intersection of symbolism, access, and spectacle, stands as an example of how public art in the Duecento period was used to instruct, regulate, and unify the community.

Politics and factionalism

Factional propaganda and the Ghibellines

One interpretation of the mural is that it functioned as a piece of political propaganda, using grotesque imagery to stigmatize the Ghibelline faction. According to Longenbach, the presence of unnatural and aggressive female figures, alongside prominently displayed phalluses and Ghibelline eagles, served as a visual warning about the alleged immorality and disorder that would accompany Ghibelline rule. Hoch similarly notes the inclusion of an imperial eagle, a symbol closely associated with the Ghibelline faction, and suggests that the mural may have been commissioned during a period of Ghibelline governance in Massa Marittima, possible under podesta Ildebrandino Malcondime. Mattelaer also identifies the eagle motif, describing one of the birds in the mural as mimicking the heraldic crest of the Ghibelline family, which had recently been ousted by the rival Guelphs. Additionally, the eagle appears visually out of place, suggesting that it may have been added at a later date by Guelph sympathizers to reinforce the mural’s anti-Ghibelline message.

The imagery’s exaggerated, almost theatrical qualities, particularly the distorted postures of the women and the absurd abundance of phalluses, may have been intended to provoke disgust or ridicule. However, this interpretation risks projecting modern assumptions onto medieval viewers, especially in terms of how nudity, genitalia, and sexual imagery were perceived in public settings. In the thirteenth century, such representations may not have been understood as grotesque or obscene in the same way they might be today. Even so, the composition may have drawn on established rhetorical strategies that framed the Ghibellines as morally corrupt or socially dangerous. Guelph partisans often described themselves as pious and merciful while portraying the Ghibellines as tyrannical, arrogant, and ungodly. These kinds of characterizations circulated widely in civic discourse and likely shaped the visual language of factional propaganda. Although the exact date and authorship of the mural remain uncertain, and it is unclear whether the eagle symbols were included in the original commission or added later, its critical tone and factional imagery suggest that it participated in the broader landscape of partisan messaging within the communal politics of the Duecento.

Elite anxiety and social collapse

Some scholars argue that the mural’s imagery reflects deeper elite anxieties about social inversion, gender disorder, and the fragility of civic authority. Medieval political discourse often characterized factional violence as a disease within the body politic, or even as a demonic force, capable of destabilizing cities from within. Although Florentine republicanism promoted broad civic participation, moments of crisis led to abrupt regime changes, revealing how appearances of constitutional stability could mask more profound structural breakdowns. These tensions prompted elites by the mid-16th century to seek greater internal cohesion and to promote a performative rhetoric of unity, even where discord persisted. Against this backdrop, the mural’s chaotic composition can be understood as a dramatization of elite fears about the collapse of social order.

Historians believe that much of this anxiety was centered on gender. Longenbach interprets the mural’s women as embodiments of male fears. Hoch similarly describes the female figures as protectors of fertility whose actions escalate into violence, reflecting a view of women’s sexuality as both powerful and threatening, particularly when untethered from patriarchal regulation. The moral ambiguity of the scene is heightened by the juxtaposition of the Ghibelline eagle with such gendered imagery. This pairing allowed Guelph partisans to reinforce narratives of Ghibelline corruption and danger, linking visual excess to political threat. When taken together, these readings suggest that the mural’s exaggerated forms and chaotic tone symbolized more than factional rivalry; they were also a reflection of the deep-seated concerns about civic disintegration and the instability of long-standing, established social hierarchies.

Gender and the body

The depiction of female figures in the mural has been interpreted by historians as reflecting medieval anxieties about women’s bodies, sexuality, and reproductive power. Longenbach argues that these women, portrayed as aggressive, uncontrolled, and sexually driven, embodied deeply rooted cultural fears about female sexuality as a disruptive force. She links this to broader ancient conceptions drawn from thinkers like Aristotle, in which women were perceived as “wet, contaminated, and dirty,” inherently opposite to men and biologically unstable. In another passage, Longenbach explains that the female body was seen as dangerously seductive even when passive, making it a constant moral and spiritual threat. These fears are visualized in the mural through the depiction of women fighting over phalluses, scrambling beneath a hyper-fertile tree in ways that verge on the absurd.

Medical and physiological views of the time reinforced these ideas. In medieval thought, a woman’s body was defined more by physiology rather than anatomy. Menstruation and menopause were understood as systemic, purgative processes tied to disorder and danger. The cessation of menstruation, in particular, was associated with the evil eye and female corruption. Green’s work also shows how female genitalia were simultaneously romanticized and feared, described in anatomical texts as both a “pretty thing” and a “gate” that concealed unpredictable internal forces. These tensions between idealization and threat echo in the mural’s symbolism, where the female figures appear both comic and alarming in their pursuit of sexualized fertility.

Gendered insult and public shaming were other ways in which medieval society reinforced control over women’s bodies. Women were overwhelmingly targeted through sexual slurs, often accused of prostitution or immodesty, while insults toward men typically referenced professional dishonesty or civic misconduct. These verbal attacks reflected broader patterns of gender regulation, including the belief that associations with whoredom could pollute not only the woman but the neighborhood around her. Smith also draws on historical sexual symbolism to note that the fig tree, central to the mural’s composition, had long served as a metaphor for female genitalia and reproductive potential.

Genital imagery as a public symbol of disorder

In medieval visual culture, representations of genitalia could function as standalone markers of disorder, subversion, or ritual insult. Dean describes a case in Bologna in which a tailor affixed to a neighbor’s window a large paper cutout of a penis and vulvas, an act of targeted social humiliation rooted in public exposure and symbolic violence. These displays, generally, focused on liminal architectural sites such as doorways and windows, places understood to be both physically and socially vulnerable. Longenbach draws a parallel between this symbolic use of genitalia and the Guelph-commissioned statue La Donna Impudica in Milan, which mocked a rival Ghibelline woman through exaggerated nudity and was strategically erected in a civic square following a regime change. These examples suggest that genital imagery, particularly when staged in public, served as a potent tool of political insult and gendered discipline. Carved reliefs of sex organs were embedded into the corbels of the Fonte dell’Abbondanza instelf, predating the mural, indicating that such visual references may have formed a broader symbolic program within the structure. Welch similarly reflects on the unsettling presence of monumental male nudes and scenes of female subjugation in urban spaces like Florence’s Piazza della Signoria, raising questions about how public artworks enforced gender hierarchies through visual dominance.

Symbolic and apotropaic meanings

Beyond their use in satire or public insult, genital forms also carried layered symbolic meanings in medieval thought. Green explains that only one iconographic tradition in the period focused explicitly on genital anatomy, and even then, it treated male and female forms asymmetrically, lacking one-to-one symbolic purity. Physiognomic analysis, the belief that character and moral standing could be read from bodily appearance, extended to sexual anatomy as well. Medieval texts speculated on how the genitals might reveal virginity, effeminacy, or spiritual corruption. Smith notes that the phallus had protective properties in some contexts, believed to repel the evil eye and promote natural forces like water flow, especially relevant in the case of the Massa Marittima mural, which sits near a public fountain. In this way, phallic imagery in the mural may have combined both the humorous and the serious, functioning simultaneously as a protective symbol, a visual warning, and a marker of social unease. These overlapping associations complicate modern interpretations of such images as simply obscene or absurd, instead positioning them within a complex visual language of power, fear, and civic meaning.

Ritual insults and gendered public discipline

In medieval society, gendered insults often intersected with public rituals of humiliation that reinforced social hierarchies and moral norms. Dean describes practices like door-scorning in Bologna, in which sexual misconduct was punished through public displays of genital drawings and insulting gestures, suggesting these actions served communal rather than personal functions. Women’s insults were often limited in form and power, while men were allowed more complex and socially sanctioned modes of verbal aggression, like blasphemy and attacks on character. This imbalance reflected a broader dynamic in which men controlled the terms of public speech and symbolic violence. Green notes that the marking of Jews, Muslims, and prostitutes through visible signs, like stars or striped garments, was intended to shape not only how they were seen, but how others interacted with them socially, legally, and sexually. These markers had real consequences, helping determine both spiritual standing and civic participation.

The mural can be seen as a part of this visual system of control. Civic officials were intensely concerned with female chastity, viewing women’s sexual behavior as a matter of public order. Welch similarly observes that even gifts associated with childbirth carried messages of moral regulation, reinforcing the ideal of proper femininity. The mural’s chaotic scene, with women grappling for phalluses beneath a hyper-fertile tree, can be interpreted as a visual warning about female sexual disorder. Longenbach argues that the composition functioned a metonymic device, reflecting communal anxieties and encoding cultural beliefs about sexuality and social stability. Hoch adds that by placing this imagery within the fountain’s architectural program, the fresco connected public infrastructure with a visual form of moral instruction. Like with verbal insults and ritual markings, the mural participated in a broader culture of gendered discipline, reinforcing boundaries of behavior through spectacle and public symbolism.

Legacy and reception

Since its rediscovery in the early 2000s, the Massa Marittima mural has drawn increasing attention from scholars, restorers, and the public alike. Its placement on a civic fountain, overt visual symbolism, and ambiguous iconography have made it an object of fascination and debate. Today, the mural is often cited as an example of how thirteenth-century Italian communes used public art not only for decoration or religious messaging, but also as a way to express political tension, enforce moral boundaries, and shape communal identity.

What continues to draw interest is the mural’s refusal to fit neatly into a single interpretive category. It straddles the line between satire, symbolism, and civic propaganda, both visually striking and ideologically complex. Whether seen as a warning, a parody, or a celebration of fertility, the mural invites multiple readings and reveals how deeply visual culture was embedded in the political and social life of Italian city-states during the Duecento.