Vecchietta at Santa Maria della Scala. A new vision for the museum complex

In the 1340s, during a period of extraordinary historical significance for Siena and its main hospital, in an atmosphere of great cultural, religious, and political ferment, the assisting and religious spaces of Santa Maria della Scala were extensively renovated and enriched with decorative elements, paintings, furnishings, and chapels, to the extent that the hospital became one of the most important centers of artistic production of the early Sienese Renaissance.

In 1328, the hospital expanded its structure with the construction of a male pilgrim's hostel, achieved through the acquisition and demolition of surrounding houses to overcome a height difference of three stories.

The church of the Santissima Annunziata, oriented longitudinally with respect to the square, today occupies much of the facade of the hospital. Numerous interventions and transformations have characterized its history, as well as the furnishings and works commissioned for it, some of which are still preserved within its structure, but also those of which traces remain in the rich hospital documentation or in the iconographic tradition.