SASSETTA

This panel was part of the predella of the altarpiece at Borgo Sansepolcro.

The picture shows one of the predella paintings of the Altar of the Eucharist by Sassetta.

Quite unlike the hieratic aura of the main scene, this predella panel of the Madonna delle Nevi (Madonna of the Snows) recording the miracle of the snow in founding of Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome, is full of naturalistic elements, and even the arrangement and presentation of the figures is casual and almost journalistic. Although the condition of the predella is not as good as that of the main panel, the atmospheric environment created for the outdoor scene is still legible.

This panel is the central section of a triptych, its wings being in the National Gallery of Art, Washington and the Frick Art Museum, Pittsburgh.

In the centre of the polyptych there is an exquisite Virgin with Child. On the left side there are Sts Nicholas and Michael, wearing rare, refined, and precious garments. St Nicholas has a chasuble bearing a Pietà. The two saints on the right side are St John the Baptist and St Margaret of Hungary. Above the side panels are two tondi representing the Annunciation.

The triptych was placed on a lateral altar in the church of St Dominic in Cortona. At the beginning of the Second World War it was immured in the belfry where the wood suffered much damage due to humidity and temperatures. It was necessary to detach the painted surface and transfer it to a new base. It has been restored after many succeeding interventions. Unfortunately, it has lost its original solidity and need continuous reexamination.

The panel is from the back of a polyptych executed for the church of the convent of San Francesco at Borgo San Sepolcro.

This panel, one of the eight smaller scenes accompanying the St Francis in Ecstasy on the back of the double-sided altarpiece, shows the saint stepping forward to place a ring on the finger of Poverty, who stands between Chastity and Obedience, as the three float off for celestial regions. Poverty glances back sweetly toward her bridegroom. The curves of the Virtues harmonize with the shapes of the cusped frame. Between Francis and the Virtues a white road runs across the valley floor to branch into curves among distant ranges that are not just a backdrop; these mountains loom before us, their contours rippling in the evening air.

The picture shows one of the predella paintings of the Altar of the Eucharist by Sassetta.

Sassetta was the greatest artist of the Sienese quattrocento. His first known work was the Altar of the Eucharist commissioned by the “Arte della Lana”, i.e. the woolmerchants’ guild for the church of the Carmelite Order in Siena in 1423.

The picture shows one of the known eight panels from the external pillars of the Altar of the Eucharist by Sassetta. The panels represent the Four Doctors of the Church: S. Jerome, Gregory, Ambrose, Augustine as well as the four patron saints of Siena: S. Ansanus, Victor, Savinus and Crescentius.

The picture shows one of the predella paintings of the Altar of the Eucharist by Sassetta.

The picture shows one of the predella paintings of the Altar of the Eucharist by Sassetta.

The life of St Thomas Aquinas was not full of spectacular miracles, and so the painter of this panel had to illustrate a subject that was not thankful from an artistic point of view. He showed the Saint deeply absorbed in prayer. God the Father, appearing in a circle of angels, send the Holy Ghost to him, in the shape of a dove. The Saint is kneeling almost gracefully, though completetly without movement, and around him there is the view of a spacious church interior, and the library and courtyard of a monastery. The sequence of spatial layers is used in such a way as to add to the animation of the composition.

This panel was part of the predella of the altarpiece at Borgo Sansepolcro.

The panel is from the predella of a polyptych executed for the church of the convent of San Francesco at Borgo San Sepolcro.

The panel formed part of an altarpiece, placed originally on the high altar of the St Francis church in Borgo San Sepolcro. According to the reconstruction of the now dismembered altarpiece, this panel was in the centre of the back side of the polyptych.

This large painting is in rather good condition. Sassetta maintains a balance between a demanding realism in certain parts, like the brilliant treatment of the hands and feet of St Francis, the more esoteric treatment of the aureole that surrounds the saint, and the gilt background.

The head of the saint in ecstasy is evidence of Sassetta’s highly controlled pictorial technique in tempera. Every eyelash is distinguished as are the hairs of his beard. Yet the slightly odd shape of the head has a geometric and even abstract quality.

This panel showing the three Magi and their retinue on their way to Bethlehem was originally the upper part of a small Adoration of the Magi now in the Palazzo Chigi-Saraceni in Siena. (The upper edge of the stable roof is just visible along the bottom right edge.) Sassetta was one of the most enchanting narrative painters of the 15th century, and although this picture is only a fragment, it is one of his most popular works. He has imagined the magis’ journey as a contemporary pageant, including fashionably attired figures and courtly details such as the hunting falcon on a man’s arm and the monkey riding on the back of a donkey. The ostriches on the hill symbolize the miraculous birth of Christ.

The picture shows one of the predella paintings of the Altar of the Eucharist by Sassetta.

A charming storyteller, Sassetta chose to ignore the recently-discovered laws of perspective and methods of rendering form realistically. In this picture, part of a series painted about 1440, he has reverted to the medieval book illustrators’ technique of showing consecutive events simultaneously and representing early Christian legends in contemporary settings.

Stefano di Giovanni, known as Sassetta, was among the leading Sienese artists of the century. In 1437 he received one of the most extensive, and expensive, commissions in Sienese fifteenth-century painting: a double-sided polyptych for the church of San Francesco in Borgo San Sepolcro (the native town of his younger contemporary Piero della Francesca). The figures and the scenes were to be specified by the friars. The altarpiece was painted in sections for easy transport from Siena to Borgo San Sepolcro, where it was delivered in 1444. It was dismembered in 1752; in the nineteenth century surviving fragments were sold to various collections.

As far as its original appearance can now be reconstructed, this great Franciscan altarpiece, like Duccio’s Maestà in Siena Cathedral, showed the Madonna and Child enthroned in the front main tier facing the congregation in the nave. The back, facing the friars in the choir, depicted Saint Francis Triumphant standing on Insubordination, Luxury and Avarice and surrounded by eight smaller scenes from his life ranged in two tiers on either side. Seven of these scenes are now in the National Gallery. The panel illustrated here is one of the best preserved. It shows one of the key events of Francis’s life, cited in the process of his canonisation: the impression on his body of the five wounds of Christ. The miracle occurred on 14 September 1224 on La Verna. This forest-covered mountain near Arezzo, where he founded an eremetical convent, had been given to Francis in 1213; it is still a site of pilgrimage.

There are many textual sources for Francis’s biography; Sassetta, however, almost certainly based his interpretation on artistic tradition. For example, the saint was alone when Christ appeared to him, but it had become customary in painting and sculpture to show his follower Brother Leo witnessing the event, as he is doing here, looking up in wonder from his book of devotions. Giotto had already depicted Saint Francis in the same pose, kneeling and raising his arms to the six-winged seraph-Christ. Sassetta is in many ways a paradoxical painter. Like Giovanni di Paolo and all other Sienese artists, he was deeply in thrall to his great Sienese predecessors of the fourteenth century, the followers of Duccio. He had studied Florentine art of the same period as well as of his own time. Around 1432 he became acquainted with French and northern Italian miniatures. Something of all these sources is evident here, in the ornamental forms of the trees, the unrealistic ledge-like rocks of the foreground and the oblique angle at which he sets the chapel nestling in the mountain - a fourteenth-century method of suggesting perspective.

At the same time as Sassetta emulated the decorative effects of archaic styles, he could not help but be influenced by the artistic advances of his day. Thus the supernatural light flooding La Verna from the seraph is virtually consistent throughout the painting. Mountain shadows darken the stuccoed fa�ade of the chapel, with its Virgin and Child above the door; Saint Francis’s cord belt casts a shadow on his habit, and his parted fingers on the ground behind his shoulder. The miracle - which has caused the wooden cross in the makeshift oratory to bleed and makes of Francis an ‘alter Christus,’ a second Christ - is felt throughout the natural world, a red sunset staining the Umbrian hills.

Suggested listening (streaming mp3, 33 minutes):

Michael Haydn: St Francis Mass

Commissioned by Ludovica Bertini, rich Sienese widow of Turino di Matteo, this altarpiece was painted in 1432 by Sassetta, one of the most famous painters from Siena in the 15th century.

The painting, which has passed into history with the name of “Madonna of the Snow” shows the Virgin enthroned with the Child and crowned by two angels. Behind the holy group are two more angels, one of whom holds a tray filled with snow, while the other is making a snowball in his hands; to the sides are the saints Peter and Paul (standing) and John the Baptist and Francis (kneeling). This latter, in particular, is a reference to the purchaser, Ludovica Bertini, who, after the death of her husband, entered the Franciscan order, as well as the two emblems on the base of the throne which refer to the families of the woman and her husband.

The predella is divided into seven compartments: it narrates the events of the miracle of the Madonna of the Snow, connected with the foundation of the basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome. According to tradition, the original perimeter of the Roman church was mapped out in the snow by Pope Liberius, after an extraordinary snowfall in August 352.

Destined to the Chapel of San Bonifacio in the Duomo of Siena, this large altarpiece is one of the most significant examples of Sienese Renaissance art. It represents an obvious step in the passage from the traditional triptych to the square panel, with references both to the elegance of the Gothic art of Simone Martini to the Renaissance art of Masaccio.

This altarpiece, known from its subject as the Madonna delle Nevi (the Madonna of the Snows) was originally commissioned for one of the oldest and most venerable altars in the Siena cathedral. It stood immediately left of the doorway known as the Porta del Perdono - the side entrance to the cathedral that provided most immediate access to both the baptistery and to the civic centre of the Palazzo Pubblico and the Campo.

Sassetta received the commission in 1430 from Ludovica Bertini, the widow of Turino di Matteo, the man responsible for both the cathedral sacristy and the baptismal font. According to one local chronicler, Turino had died in 1423 and been buried in front of the Porta del Perdono. In the contract for the altarpiece, Ludovica makes it clear that she is commissioning the work both in memory of her husband and also in her own right as a pious Franciscan tertiary, so the coat-of-arms of her own family as well as that of her husband appear prominently displayed on the richly ornamented fabric covering the Virgin’s throne. Her commitment to the Franciscan Order is clearly demonstrated by the inclusion of Saint Francis in the right foreground of the main panel of the altarpiece. The imagery chosen for the rest of the altarpiece, however, was entirely Sienese and civic in intention. It depicts the familiar subject of the enthroned Virgin with the Christ Child on her lap and surrounded by angels and saints. The altarpiece therefore echoes the imagery of two of Siena’s most revered civic icons - the front face of Duccio’s high altarpiece for the cathedral and Simone Martini’s mural in the council hall of the Palazzo Pubblico. That such an association was explicitly intended is shown by the inscription engraved on the Virgin’s halo: ‘If you trust me, Siena, you will be full of favour’.

The imagery of the altarpiece was elaborated in order to honour two of the Virgin’s titles - ‘Queen of Heaven’ and ‘Our Lady of the Snows’. Two angels behind the throne hold a crown over the Virgin’s head. The angel on the left of the throne, meanwhile, carries a dish filled with snow and the angel on the right makes a snowball. The seven narrative scenes of the predella describe in detail the legend of Our Lady of the Snows. They show how, in the reign of Pope Liberius (352-66), the Virgin caused snow to fall miraculously in the heat of August on the Esquiline Hill in Rome. Furthermore, the snow fell precisely in the pattern of the ground plan of a church. The Virgin then instructed a wealthy layman and his wife, and Pope Liberius, to build a church in her honour on this site - a church that became Santa Maria Maggiore, one of Rome’s major basilicas.

These panels are part of a polyptych executed for the church of the convent of San Francesco at Borgo San Sepolcro. They represents the Virgin and Child Adored by Six Angels (centre), and Sts Anthony of Padua and John the Evangelist (wings).

The iconography of the Virgin seated on a cushion derives from the work of Simone Martini and was very popular in fourteenth-century western Europe. The theme was picked up in the following century by artists such as Sassetta and Giovanni di Paolo.

The picture shows the head of St Michael.

The picture shows the head of St Nicholas.