Allegory of Borgo San Sepolcro; to the bottom, view of Scarperia

Vasari's Allegory of Borgo San Sepolcro with a view of Scarperia below, executed in fresco in 1557, belongs to the remarkable series of territorial allegories he created for the Palazzo Vecchio as part of Cosimo I de' Medici's comprehensive visual map of Tuscan dominion. Borgo San Sepolcro, Piero della Francesca's hometown, was a significant Tuscan centre under Florentine jurisdiction, and its allegorisation alongside a view of Scarperia — another Florentine administrative centre — demonstrates the programme's dual purpose: personalising Tuscan territories as elegant female figures while documenting their geographic reality through prospect views. These fresco allegories combine the allegorical tradition of personified places with the emerging genre of topographical landscape painting, making them particularly sophisticated examples of Mannerist pictorial thinking.

Fresco technique required Vasari to work with confidence and speed on wet plaster, building the allegory and its topographical landscape component in successive giornate. The female personification would be handled with smooth, summary modelling suited to the buon fresco technique, while the landscape view below could deploy the looser, more atmospheric touch appropriate to distance.