# Exterior view [View the canonical artwork record]() ## Artwork - Artist: [ARCHITECT, Italian]() - Date: 1301-1350 - Technique: Photo ## Commentary The variety of civil building and rebuilding in early-fourteenth-century Siena was matched by the multiplicity of churches that were being started or enlarged. Among the latter, San Domenico and San Francesco rank as two of the most important brick constructions in Central Italy. Both were replacements for more modest buildings, and both flow directly from the thirteenth-century Tuscan mendicant tradition. The existing San Domenico seems to date from after 1309, when materials for the east end were being amassed. The enormous brick pile of the choir and transepts, towering above the Fontebranda, is built up from the hillside on a high substructure which contains a vaulted crypt so monumental as to be effectively a lower church. ## Related artworks - [Aerial view]() - [Aerial view]() - [Apse of a basilica]() - [Arsenale Gateway]() - [Arsenale Gateway]() - [Basilica di Sant'Antonio: Chiostro del Noviziato]() - [Basilica Santi Nereo e Achilleo]() - [Ca' Foscari: Façade]() - [Chamber of the millers]() - [Chiesa dell'Incoronata: Interior of the dome]() - [Cloister gallery]() - [Detail of the façade]() ## Attribution [Web Gallery of Art]()