SANO di Pietro

This panel formed part of a diptych, the other panel representing the Virgin of the Annunciation.

This panel was part of a predella consisting of five scenes from the life of the Virgin. The predella was commissioned in 1448 from Sano di Pietro for an existing altarpiece in the Capella dei Signore in the Palazzo Pubblico in Siena. It is assumed that this altarpiece is identical with that painted by Simone Martini around 1326, and now dispersed in various collections.

The predella consist of the following scenes:

Birth of the Virgin (University of Michigan Museum of Art, Ann Arbor)

Presentation of the Virgin at the Temple (Pinacoteca Vatican, Rome)

Return of the Virgin (Lindenau-Museum, Altenburg)

Marriage of the Virgin (Pinacoteca Vaticana, Rome)

Assumption of the Virgin (Lindenau-Museum, Altenburg)

In the lower part of the Assumption of the Virgin, St Thomas is depicted in a strongly reduced scale. He is kneeling before the open tomb to receive the miraculous girdle of the Mother of God.

This small panel was part of a predella.

This panel was part of a predella consisting of five scenes from the life of the Virgin. The predella was commissioned in 1448 from Sano di Pietro for an existing altarpiece in the Capella dei Signore in the Palazzo Pubblico in Siena. It is assumed that this altarpiece is identical with that painted by Simone Martini around 1326, and now dispersed in various collections.

The predella consist of the following scenes:

Birth of the Virgin (University of Michigan Museum of Art, Ann Arbor)

Presentation of the Virgin at the Temple (Pinacoteca Vatican, Rome)

Return of the Virgin (Lindenau-Museum, Altenburg)

Marriage of the Virgin (Pinacoteca Vaticana, Rome)

Assumption of the Virgin (Lindenau-Museum, Altenburg)

This painting - together with two other panels - belonged to a predella depicting posthumous miracles associated with St Bernardino. The event depicted in this panel took place on 22 May 1450, a week after Saint Bernardino’s canonization by order of Pope Nicholas V. It shows the paralytic donna Perna, wife of the Aquilean Matteo Petrucci, being cured after approaching the corpse of Saint Bernardino: his body was removed from its coffin by the people of Aquila and displayed in the church for veneration almost exactly six years after the saint’s death in the Franciscan convent of Aquila on 20 May 1444.

This panel was part of a predella.

Around 1450, the year in which St Bernardino was canonized Sano di Pietro was commissioned to paint numerous images of the patron saint of Siena. These historical events explain the large number of small devotional panels depicting the Madonna and Child flanked by St Bernardino and usually one other saint, of which the present panel is a fine example. The sunken cheeks of St Bernardino and the physiognomic resemblance among the various representations of the saint, are explained by the fact that Sano di Pietro apparently used a wax mask, taken of the saint’s head at the moment of his death, to ensure an accurate likeness (a cast of the mask was at one time preserved at the museum of Aquila).

The Madonna of Humility is seated on a cushion, surrounded by cherubim (angels depicted as winged heads).

This panel was part of a predella consisting of five scenes from the life of the Virgin. The predella was commissioned in 1448 from Sano di Pietro for an existing altarpiece in the Capella dei Signore in the Palazzo Pubblico in Siena. It is assumed that this altarpiece is identical with that painted by Simone Martini around 1326, and now dispersed in various collections.

The predella consist of the following scenes:

Birth of the Virgin (University of Michigan Museum of Art, Ann Arbor)

Presentation of the Virgin at the Temple (Pinacoteca Vatican, Rome)

Return of the Virgin (Lindenau-Museum, Altenburg)

Marriage of the Virgin (Pinacoteca Vaticana, Rome)

Assumption of the Virgin (Lindenau-Museum, Altenburg)

This panel was part of a predella consisting of five scenes from the life of the Virgin. The predella was commissioned in 1448 from Sano di Pietro for an existing altarpiece in the Capella dei Signore in the Palazzo Pubblico in Siena. It is assumed that this altarpiece is identical with that painted by Simone Martini around 1326, and now dispersed in various collections.

The predella consist of the following scenes:

Birth of the Virgin (University of Michigan Museum of Art, Ann Arbor)

Presentation of the Virgin at the Temple (Pinacoteca Vatican, Rome)

Return of the Virgin (Lindenau-Museum, Altenburg)

Marriage of the Virgin (Pinacoteca Vaticana, Rome)

Assumption of the Virgin (Lindenau-Museum, Altenburg)

This panel was part of a predella consisting of five scenes from the life of the Virgin. The predella was commissioned in 1448 from Sano di Pietro for an existing altarpiece in the Capella dei Signore in the Palazzo Pubblico in Siena. It is assumed that this altarpiece is identical with that painted by Simone Martini around 1326, and now dispersed in various collections.

The predella consist of the following scenes:

Birth of the Virgin (University of Michigan Museum of Art, Ann Arbor)

Presentation of the Virgin at the Temple (Pinacoteca Vatican, Rome)

Return of the Virgin (Lindenau-Museum, Altenburg)

Marriage of the Virgin (Pinacoteca Vaticana, Rome)

Assumption of the Virgin (Lindenau-Museum, Altenburg)

The subject of the return of the Virgin to the house of her parents is rarely treated in painting. It is based on the Golden Legend by Jacobus de Voragine.

Sano di Pietro followed the manner of his master, Sassetta. The predella of his altarpiece painted for the Jesuit convent of San Girolamo in Siena depicts scenes from the life of St Jerome. This altarpiece is Sano di Pietro’s first known work.

This part of the predella represents: St Jerome Dreams he is Whipped on Christ’s Order.

Sano di Pietro followed the manner of his master, Sassetta. The predella of his altarpiece painted for the Jesuit convent of San Girolamo in Siena depicts scenes from the life of St Jerome. This altarpiece is Sano di Pietro’s first known work.

This part of the predella represents: The Penitence of St Jerome.

Sano di Pietro followed the manner of his master, Sassetta. The predella of his altarpiece painted for the Jesuit convent of San Girolamo in Siena depicts scenes from the life of St Jerome. This altarpiece is Sano di Pietro’s first known work.

This part of the predella represents: The Legend of the Tame Lion.

Sano di Pietro followed the manner of his master, Sassetta. The predella of his altarpiece painted for the Jesuit convent of San Girolamo in Siena depicts scenes from the life of St Jerome. This altarpiece is Sano di Pietro’s first known work.

This part of the predella represents: The Death of the Saint and his Appearing to St Cyril of Jerusalem.

Sano di Pietro followed the manner of his master, Sassetta. The predella of his altarpiece painted for the Jesuit convent of San Girolamo in Siena depicts scenes from the life of St Jerome. This altarpiece is Sano di Pietro’s first known work.

This part of the predella represents: The Saint Appears to Sulpicius Severus then beside St John the Baptist, to St Augustine.

On 20 May 1444 the celebrated Sienese Franciscan friar Bernardino Albizzeschi died in Aquila. Although unable to secure his physical remains, the Sienese government and the local Franciscan Observants immediately mounted an energetic campaign to have him recognised as a saint. On 7 June the prior and councillors of the Compagnia della Vergine were authorised to spend as much money as they deemed necessary for an image to celebrate the memory of Bernardino. The commission was given to Sano di Pietro on 28 May 1445.

The three principal panels of this altarpiece are now on display in the cathedral museum. They show the saint ascending into heaven, preaching outside San Francesco in Siena and preaching in the Campo. A plausible reconstruction of the altarpiece suggests that the three paintings once formed a triptych with the two portrayals of Bernardino’s power as a preacher both framing and, through the emphatic diagonals of their compositions, focussing on the central image of Bernardino himself. Sano di Pietro represented the gaunt face of the saint in a particularly effective manner, with details that were almost certainly taken from Bernardino’s own death mask and which appear consistently in later painted and sculpted representations of him.

Sano di Pietro’s other major achievement in this altarpiece was to represent, in graphic detail, one of the principal reasons why Bernardino was revered by the Sienese. He painted two highly descriptive scenes of the saint preaching in immediately recognisable locations in Siena itself (which also show how men and women were strictly segregated at these events). Each preaching scene alludes to a particular religious cult for which Bernardino was famed. Thus in the San Francesco scene Bernardino appears in the pulpit with a crucifix, as a reminder of his devotion towards the crucified Christ. In the Campo scene, meanwhile, he holds up the IHS monogram (an abbreviation of the Greek word for Jesus), a symbol that Bernardino made famous across Italy in his preaching.

St Jerome is on the left wing of a triptych.

This panel was part of a predella.

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Michael Praetorius: Motet

Sano di Pietro was the most prolific of all Sassetta’s followers. His first securely dated work, the Gesuati Polyptych with its noble portrait of the kneeling Colombini, was painted when he was already almost forty. But over the next few decades, Sano’s workshop would turn out repetitive assemblies of stereotyped saints (the Siena Pinacoteca alone counts more than forty altarpieces of this kind). Only in his delightful small predella scenes does some vestige of his earlier poetic invention surface again.

This triptych is from the late period of the artist. The centre panel, representing the Virgin and Child with praying angels, is flanked by two side wings depicting St Jerome (at left) and St Clare (at right). In the lower left corner of the centre panel the small figure of the kneeling donor can be seen.

The Virgin and Child are shown seated on a ledge. What would normally be the backrest of the throne behind them is substituted instead by two red seraphim. Above them Christ is shown as the Redeemer, holding the New Testament in one hand and raising the other hand in blessing.

This panel formed the central part of a now dismembered polyptych flanked by depictions of saints.

What would normally be the backrest of the throne behind the Virgin is substituted instead by two red seraphim.

Sano di Pietro was a popular and highly prolific Sienese painter and illuminator, whose workshop produced numerous devotional images of the Madonna and Child, frequently shown in bust-length and accompanied by saints and angels.

In the present work the Christ Child holds a goldfinch symbolizing the Resurrection, while resting his left hand on the embroidered collar of the Virgin’s dress. They are accompanied by Sts Jerome, Bernardino, John the Baptist, Anthony of Padua, and two angels. The design for the heads of the Virgin and Child reappears with some frequency in paintings by Sano’s workshop, suggesting the use of a cartoon (full-scale drawing) to transfer the image. The frame is carved in five sections and engaged to the panel. The same punch tools used to decorate the frame were employed in the halos of the saints and angels.