VECCHIETTA

Between 1435 and 1439 Vecchietta executed for Cardinal Branda Castiglione (1350–1443) a series of frescoes at Castiglione Olona, near Varese in Lombardy. The frescoes depict stories of St Lawrence and St Stephen Martyr.

Between 1435 and 1439 Vecchietta executed for Cardinal Branda Castiglione (1350–1443) a series of frescoes at Castiglione Olona, near Varese in Lombardy. The frescoes depict stories of St Lawrence and St Stephen Martyr.

The picture shows a detail of one of the panels of the outer shutters of the Arliquiera. It represents St Catherine of Siena in a mystical trance.

The Arliquiera is a wooden structure designed to enclose the hospital’s precious relics in a niche in the wall of the sacristy of the Spedale di Santa Maria della Scala in Siena. Vecchietta’s work in the sacristy started with the painting of the Arliquiera.

On its outer face the Arliquiera displayed a series of saints and beati who were particularly revered in Siena and in the Spedale. Members of major religious orders were skilfully juxtaposed with members of the lay orders associated with them. Thus below the Dominican friar Ambrogio Sansedoni appeared the Dominican tertiary Catherine of Siena. Represented just above the massive metal bolts that secured the doors of the Arliquiera was the Blessed Agostino Novello, a figure of particular relevance to the Spedale. Believed to have written the rule for the hospital community of Augustinian tertiaries, this Augustinian friar is accordingly shown in the act of bestowing the mantle of office on the kneeling figure of a rector. Above this array of civic saints was placed a sequence of four paintings that portrayed in the outer compartments the Archangel Gabriel and the Virgin of the Annunciation and in the centre the Crucifixion and the Resurrection. While the first two figures alluded to the annual display of the relics to the public on the feast of the Annunciation, the second two scenes acted as a reminder of a prized relic held in the Arliquiera - one of the nails believed to have been used at the Crucifixion. The inner surfaces of the doors were painted with eight scenes depicting the Passion. Thus, when the doors were opened, the relics would have been framed by an entire sequence of paintings illustrating the key events that led up to the Crucifixion and Resurrection.

The articles of faith in the Creed is the subject of the ceiling frescoes of the Baptistery in Siena (1450–53), which revert to an ostensibly miniaturist precision of placement, but cleaning has revealed that the brushwork was carried out with remarkable freedom. Tawny russet hues predominate.

The articles of faith in the Creed is the subject of the ceiling frescoes of the Baptistery in Siena (1450–53), which revert to an ostensibly miniaturist precision of placement, but cleaning has revealed that the brushwork was carried out with remarkable freedom. Tawny russet hues predominate.

The articles of faith in the Creed is the subject of the ceiling frescoes of the Baptistery in Siena (1450–53), which revert to an ostensibly miniaturist precision of placement, but cleaning has revealed that the brushwork was carried out with remarkable freedom. Tawny russet hues predominate.

Vecchietta’s most elaborate work in bronze is the multi-figured ciborium (transferred to the high altar of Siena Cathedral in 1506, replacing Duccio’s Maestà) made for the high altar of Santa Maria della Scala, Siena. Supported on a stem embellished with putti and music-making angels, the tempietto-shaped body of the ciborium is in the form of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. It is topped by a statuette of the Risen Christ, superb in contrapposto and balancing precariously on a chalice.

A painted model for the ciborium survives (Pinacoteca Nazionale, Siena).

The restraint of the frescoes in Palazzo Pubblico co-exists with a fresher approach to narrative in such smaller-scale paintings as the Biccherna panel of the Coronation of Pius II, the pope who was to be Vecchietta’s next main patron, and the predella of the altarpiece of the Virgin and Child with Saints (1461-62; now Museo Diocesano, Pienza) from San Niccolò a Spedaletto, Pienza.

The Archivio di Stato hosts the Biccherne collection, the painted wood covers of the city of Siena’s account books, called the Tavolette di Biccherna.

In this manuscript of the Divine Comedy, made in Siena in the 1440s for Alfonso V, king of Naples (1416-1458), the initial shown here (folio 65r) is attributed to Vecchietta and other miniatures in the volume are ascribed to Giovanni di Paolo. In the initial, the sails are hoisted in the little ship carrying Virgil and Dante on their journey to Purgatory.

Vecchietta’s final commission (1480) was for painted wood reliefs of the Death of the Virgin and Assumption of the Virgin (Villa Guinigi, Lucca), but he lived to execute only the first, the Assumption being completed by Neroccio de’ Landi. This is a final instance of how Vecchietta helped to mould two generations of Sienese artists, but his greatest legacies were the works for his own chapel.

Vecchietta’s final commission (1480) was for painted wood reliefs of the Death of the Virgin and Assumption of the Virgin (Villa Guinigi, Lucca), but he lived to execute only the first, the Assumption being completed by Neroccio de’ Landi. This is a final instance of how Vecchietta helped to mould two generations of Sienese artists, but his greatest legacies were the works for his own chapel.

Between 1435 and 1439 Vecchietta executed for Cardinal Branda Castiglione (1350-1443) a series of frescoes at Castiglione Olona, near Varese in Lombardy. Besides the frescoes depicting stories of St Lawrence and St Stephen Martyr in the apse of the Collegiata, he also painted the frescoes in the chapel of the Cardinal’s palace in the town, depicting the Evangelists (vault) and friezes of male and female saints (side walls). Although abraded and fragmentary, they nevertheless indicate the naturalistic effects of atmospheric lighting and foreshortening that, more than any other Sienese painter of his day, he had learnt from Masolino and the Florentine painters.

Between 1435 and 1439 Vecchietta executed for Cardinal Branda Castiglione (1350-1443) a series of frescoes at Castiglione Olona, near Varese in Lombardy. Besides the frescoes depicting stories of St Lawrence and St Stephen Martyr in the apse of the Collegiata, he also painted the frescoes in the chapel of the Cardinal’s palace in the town, depicting the Evangelists (vault) and friezes of male and female saints (side walls).

The picture shows female saints.

Between 1435 and 1439 Vecchietta executed for Cardinal Branda Castiglione (1350-1443) a series of frescoes at Castiglione Olona, near Varese in Lombardy. Besides the frescoes depicting stories of St Lawrence and St Stephen Martyr in the apse of the Collegiata, he also painted the frescoes in the chapel of the Cardinal’s palace in the town, depicting the Evangelists (vault) and friezes of male and female saints (side walls).

The picture shows holy shepherds, monks and anchorites on the side wall.

Santa Maria della Scala is a museum complex in Siena, located in Piazza del Duomo, right in front of the cathedral. One of the oldest and largest European hospitals, it is now one of the most important museums and cultural centres of the city. The church of the Santissima Annunziata is incorporated within the complex of the ancient hospital.

In the interior of the church, the marble high altar in the centre of the presbytery is surmounted by a bronze statue depicting the Risen Christ by Vecchietta (signed and dated 1476). It is the most expressive fifteenth-century Sienese masterpiece, often related to the works of Donatello in the city. On either side of the Risen Christ are bronze candelabra in the form of angels, made by Accursio Baldi of Monte San Savino (1585). The frontal is decorated with the marble Dead Christ by Giuseppe Mazzuoli (1673), while the marble sculptures that adorn the altar are from his workshop.

Santa Maria della Scala is a museum complex in Siena, located in Piazza del Duomo, right in front of the cathedral. One of the oldest and largest European hospitals, it is now one of the most important museums and cultural centres of the city. The church of the Santissima Annunziata is incorporated within the complex of the ancient hospital.

In the interior of the church, the marble high altar in the centre of the presbytery is surmounted by a bronze statue depicting the Risen Christ by Vecchietta (signed and dated 1476). It is the most expressive fifteenth-century Sienese masterpiece, often related to the works of Donatello in the city. On either side of the Risen Christ are bronze candelabra in the form of angels, made by Accursio Baldi of Monte San Savino (1585). The frontal is decorated with the marble Dead Christ by Giuseppe Mazzuoli (1673), while the marble sculptures that adorn the altar are from his workshop.

The marble high altar of the presbytery was built in 1532 by Baldassarre Peruzzi. The enormous bronze ciborium is the work of Vecchietta (1467-72, originally commissioned for the church of the Hospital of Santa Maria della Scala, across the square, and brought to the cathedral in 1506). At the sides of the high altar, the lower pair of angels are masterpieces by Francesco di Giorgio Martini; the upper pair were made by Giovanni di Stefano (1443-c. 1506), the son of the painter Sassetta.

Although Vecchetta’s paintings and sculpture are usually considered separately, the two functions reinforced each other throughout his career. For example, the measured approach to monumentality in his fresco of the Lamentation, formerly in the Martinozzi Chapel in San Francesco, Siena, is also evident in the contemporary painted wood Pietà from San Michele al Monte di San Donato, Siena, which has a similar composition.

Between 1435 and 1439 Vecchietta executed for Cardinal Branda Castiglione (1350–1443) a series of frescoes at Castiglione Olona, near Varese in Lombardy. He has been considered an assistant of Masolino da Panicale in this enterprise, but the scenes of the martyrdoms of Sts Lawrence and Stephen in the apse of the Collegiata, below Masolino’s vault frescoes, show that Vecchietta’s closely packed compositional style was already fully formed.

Based on a record from 1460 of a debt owed by ‘Master Lorenzo di Pietro and Benvenuto and Francesco, painters’, responsibility for a group of lively predella panels is divided among three artists, claiming the Miracle of St Louis of Toulouse (Pinacoteca, Vatican) for Vecchietta, the Miracle of St Anthony of Padua (Alte Pinakothek, Munich) for Benvenuto di Giovanni and the Sermon of St Bernardino of Siena (Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool) for the young Francesco di Giorgio Martini. The style of all three scenes, in which the painstaking perspective established in the Pellegrinaio fresco appears again, is, however, that of Vecchietta, whose self-portrait is discernible in the Liverpool panel (he also appears in the Madonna of Mercy fresco and in his late altarpiece in Siena).

The elegant Loggia della Mercanzia, known also as Loggia di San Paolo or Loggia dei Nobili, is typical of Senese architecture in its transition from Medieval to Renaissance – a development that was slower in this city than in the rest of Italy and that is marked by the persistence of Gothic details.

Designed by Sano di Matteo and Pietro del Minella between 1417 and 1428, the Gothic-Renaissance Loggia della Mercanzia is composed of a spacious loggia with three arches supported above richly adorned columns and capitals. In the 17th century tabernacles were placed on the supporting columns to hold 15th century statues by Vecchietta, who sculpted a St Paul in 1458 and a St Peter in 1460, and by Antonio Federighi, who is responsible for San Savino (St Sabinus), Sant’Ansano (St Ansanus of Siena) and the San Vittore (St Victor), all sculpted between 1456 and 1463.

The picture shows the five statues of the Loggia, from the left: St Sabinus, St Peter, St Ansanus, St Victor, and St Paul.

The altarpiece, depicting the Madonna with Child and Sts Biagio, John the Baptist, Nicola and Floriano, was made for the main altar of the church - consecrated by Pius II in 1462 - of the grange, a fortified farm of the Hospital of Siena in Spedaletto, not far from Pienza. It was commissioned by Niccolò Ricoveri and Floriano di Jacopo, respectively rector and treasurer of that great Sienese institute. Each of their onomastic saints appear in the main register to the left of the Virgin, while the other saints, John and Biagio, alluded respectively to the baptismal function of the church and to an important reliquary possessed by Sienese hospital.

The attention to perspective and the luminosity of the composition testify an interest in Domenico Veneziano, while the fierce-looking Baptist appears to allude to the celebrated bronze statue that Donatello had left in the Duomo of Siena in that same period. The format of the painting imitates the Renaissance carpentry of altarpieces commissioned by Pius II for the Cathedral of Pienza, but this one is different since it replaces the traditional gold background instead of realistic ones.

The lunette show the Annunciation; the predella, along the sides, depicts the emblems of the Sienese Hospital of Santa Maria della Scala and the Martyrdom of St Biagio, the Crucifixion and St Nicola giving alms to three young maidens.

Although Vecchetta’s paintings and sculpture are usually considered separately, the two functions reinforced each other throughout his career. For example, the measured approach to monumentality in his fresco of the Lamentation, formerly in the Martinozzi Chapel in San Francesco, Siena, is also evident in the contemporary painted wood Pietà from San Michele al Monte di San Donato, Siena, which has a similar composition.

Vecchietta was Donatello’s pupil of first rank during Donatello’s stay in Siena. However, he began and continued as painter. True to his pictorial inclinations he gravitated towards bronze. He worked for the Cathedral in Siena. In a memorial chapel for his own interment he executed and signed both paintings and sculptures.

In the highly detailed, signed bronze relief of the Resurrection, Vecchietta drew on his experiences as a painter. The piece is both too richly worked and too weighty to have served as a tabernacle door as is sometimes claimed.

The signed and dated Resurrection is related to his works for the Cathedral.

Suggested listening (streaming mp3, 22 minutes):

Guillaume Dufay: Hymns

In 1477 Vecchietta succeeded in his petition of the previous year to build a burial chapel to his own design for himself and his wife in the church of the Ospedale della Scala, Siena. On the altar was placed the great bronze figure of the Risen Christ, which now adorns the high altar of the church. Behind hung his panel of the Virgin and Child with Sts Peter, Paul, Lawrence and Francis (now Pinacoteca Nazionale, Siena), the two last being the name-saints of Vecchietta and his wife Francesca. It is remarkable that he signed the bronze as painter and the panel as sculptor, in a way that proclaims his mastery of both media and also their inter-reliance.

In 1477 Vecchietta succeeded in his petition of the previous year to build a burial chapel to his own design for himself and his wife in the church of the Ospedale della Scala, Siena. On the altar was placed the great bronze figure of the Risen Christ, which now adorns the high altar of the church. Behind hung his panel of the Virgin and Child with Sts Peter, Paul, Lawrence and Francis (now Pinacoteca Nazionale, Siena), the two last being the name-saints of Vecchietta and his wife Francesca. It is remarkable that he signed the bronze as painter and the panel as sculptor, in a way that proclaims his mastery of both media and also their inter-reliance.

Vecchietta’s most remarkable work is the Risen Christ, a bronze figure harrowing in its insistence on realistic details such as the veins on the legs, arms, and torso; its dramatic expressiveness betrays the influence of the late Donatello.

The scene of the Flagellation takes place on a shallow protruding pavement marked with six orthogonals. In the centre Christ is shown bound to the column.

The original setting for this relief is not known, but it was perhaps meant for private devotion in the home, or alternatively, perhaps was designed for a predella of an altarpiece. The dramatic poses of the flagellators show the sculptor’s interest in exploring the human figure from different viewpoints. The punched decoration of the inner border is unusual for a bronze, being a feature of gold-ground panel paintings.

Based on a record from 1460 of a debt owed by ‘Master Lorenzo di Pietro and Benvenuto and Francesco, painters’, responsibility for a group of lively predella panels is divided among three artists, claiming the Miracle of St Louis of Toulouse (Pinacoteca, Vatican) for Vecchietta, the Miracle of St Anthony of Padua (Alte Pinakothek, Munich) for Benvenuto di Giovanni and the Sermon of St Bernardino of Siena (Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool) for the young Francesco di Giorgio Martini. The style of all three scenes, in which the painstaking perspective established in the Pellegrinaio fresco appears again, is, however, that of Vecchietta, whose self-portrait is discernible in the Liverpool panel (he also appears in the Madonna of Mercy fresco and in his late altarpiece in Siena).

St Bernardino (1380-1444) was a Franciscan friar from Siena and the most important travelling preacher in early 15th-century Italy. He is preaching from an outdoor pulpit on the fa�ade of a church, which has been ‘opened up’ to reveal the interior. The artist has used the new rules of perspective to focus attention on the crucifix at the centre of the composition. Following custom the women are divided from the men by a curtain.

The artist’s name is unknown. He was probably one of Vecchietta’s talented associates working in Siena and may have been Francesco di Giorgio Martini.

Vecchietta’s grave and even bleak marble niche figures of Sts Peter and Paul on the Loggia della Mercanzia show strong influence of Donatello, the St Paul being based on Donatello’s St Mark for Orsanmichele, Florence. The taut play of line in these statues, however, is entirely Vecchietta’s own.

Vecchietta’s grave and even bleak marble niche figures of Sts Peter and Paul on the Loggia della Mercanzia show strong influence of Donatello.

This panel, portraying the Dominican saint in a Renaissance niche, may have been part of a larger composition. The saint is identified by the inscription at his feet and by his attributes, a martyr’s palm and the sickle with which he was killed.

The picture shows one of the panels of the outer shutters of the Arliquiera. Believed to have written the rule for the hospital community of Augustinian tertiaries, Agostino Novello, an Augustinian friar, is accordingly shown in the act of bestowing the mantle of office on the kneeling figure of a rector - it seems reasonable to suppose that it may be intended as a portrait of Urbano di Pietro del Bello, who was rector of the Spedale between 1444 and 1450.

In the mid-1460s Pope Pius II commissioned four of Siena’s leading painters to execute altarpieces for his newly completed cathedral in Pienza. These were the two slightly older painters Sano di Pietro and Giovanni di Paolo, the tried and tested Vecchietta, and a younger painter, Matteo di Giovanni. The cathedral was built by the Florentine architect Bernardo Rossellino according to the patron’s taste for both Italian renaissance architecture and the tall, luminous interiors of north European churches, it was furnished entirely according to his preferences and wishes.

Each of the four painters executed an altarpiece whose form and subject matter appears to have been closely controlled by their humanist patron. Vecchietta’s takes the distinctive form of a kind of unified triptych, depicting the Virgin of the Assumption in the centre and pairs of saints on either side. These are Agatha, Pius, Calixtus and Catherine of Siena. Destined to be placed over the altar in the chapel to the left of the central chapel (when facing towards it), its subject honoured the dedication of the cathedral to the Virgin of the Assumption; the identities of the patron, Pius II, and his own patron and papal predecessor, Pope Calixtus III; and the Sienese saint whom Pius had canonised in 1461.

While recalling the original design and gilded magnificence of the patronal altarpieces for Siena cathedral, this altarpiece was rendered in a notably contemporary manner, the framework adopting the repertoire of Renaissance architecture - simple, rectangular mouldings and a round (not pointed) arch, surmounted by a triangular pediment. The central image of the Virgin of the Assumption also demonstrates Vecchietta’s confident handling of pictorial spaces, both in terms of the angels grouped in a circle below the seated figure of the Virgin and in the lyrical landscape behind the figure of Saint Thomas in the lower foreground. The pairs of saints on either side of this image stand on a pavement embellished with circles, likewise seen in depth. These saints too are portrayed as substantial figures who relate to one another.

This fresco is located on the east wall of the Pellegrinaio in the Spedale di Santa Maria della Scala. The Pellegrinaio is a fourteenth-century room which took the form of a long vaulted hall situated on the ground floor of the hospital.

Vecchietta was entrusted with painting the first in the series of paintings on the east wall that illustrated scenes in the Spedale’s history. This was the Vision of St Sorore (The Founding of the Spedale di Santa Maria della Scala).

In this painting Vecchietta set the complex scene in what appears to be a vaulted church. This allowed him to place the central narrative event within the nave of this church. Here the cobbler, Sorore, the mythical founder of the Spedale, is shown describing to one of the canons of the cathedral the vision that his mother was alleged to have experienced before his birth. Behind these two figures, in the space of the domed crossing, appears the vision itself - the Virgin welcoming infants who have reached heaven by climbing up the hospital’s emblem of a ladder. The right-hand aisle of the church, meanwhile, acts as the setting for the first occasion when Sorore brought a foundling to one of the cathedral canons and received money for the upkeep of the child. The entire edifice is fronted by an impressive fa�ade whose style with its antique detail of fluted piers, ornate capitals and frieze is unequivocally Renaissance. Perspective has been employed to great effect, both on the pavement of the church and in the recession of the building itself.

The complete description of the frescoes in the Pellegrinaio can be found in the section of Domenico di Bartolo, who executed six of the surviving eight frescoes of the hall.

This fresco is located on the east wall of the Pellegrinaio in the Spedale di Santa Maria della Scala. The Pellegrinaio is a fourteenth-century room took the form of a long vaulted hall situated on the ground floor of the hospital.

Vecchietta was entrusted with painting the first in the series of paintings on the east wall that illustrated scenes in the Spedale’s history. This was the Vision of St Sorore (The Founding of the Spedale di Santa Maria della Scala).

In this painting Vecchietta set the complex scene in what appears to be a vaulted church. This allowed him to place the central narrative event within the nave of this church. Here the cobbler, Sorore, the mythical founder of the Spedale, is shown describing to one of the canons of the cathedral the vision that his mother was alleged to have experienced before his birth. Behind these two figures, in the space of the domed crossing, appears the vision itself - the Virgin welcoming infants who have reached heaven by climbing up the hospital’s emblem of a ladder. The right-hand aisle of the church, meanwhile, acts as the setting for the first occasion when Sorore brought a foundling to one of the cathedral canons and received money for the upkeep of the child. The entire edifice is fronted by an impressive fa�ade whose style with its antique detail of fluted piers, ornate capitals and frieze is unequivocally Renaissance. Perspective has been employed to great effect, both on the pavement of the church and in the recession of the building itself.

The complete description of the frescoes in the Pellegrinaio can be found in the section of Domenico di Bartolo, who executed six of the surviving eight frescoes of the hall.

Vecchietta’s earliest surviving documented work is the Allegory of the Blessed Sorore and the Education of the Foundlings (1441) in the Ospedale di Santa Maria della Scala, Siena; it is the only fresco to be preserved of four he painted there, and the first of several major commissions for the hospital. It contrasts with the neighbouring frescoes by Domenico di Bartolo in its orderly and rational approach to the architectural setting (in which a Roman triumphal arch is set in front of an aisled nave) and in its subtly graded coloration.

Vecchietta brought into Siena a new Renaissance architectural d�cor to the traditional form of the portable leafed triptych. The centre panel of the present triptych depicts the Virgin Enthroned with the Child, while the left wing represents St John the Baptist, the right wing St Jerome.

Vecchietta worked in both miniature and monumental styles, so that works carried out in the same years for the sacristy of the Ospedale di Santa Maria della Scala, Siena, show differing forms of expression. The painted panels of the sacristy’s reliquary cabinet are by at least two artists, but those on the exterior bearing local Sienese saints are closer to Vecchietta’s style: Blessed Agostino Novello and Blessed Catherine of Siena are certainly autograph panels. Although damaged, the frescoes of 1446-49 show a contrasting spaciousness. Christ blessing, Evangelists, Doctors of the Church and Prophets are depicted on the vault of the sacristy, while on the walls are Old and New Testament scenes and the Last Judgement.

The picture shows a wall with the Trinity and an Old Testament scene below.

Vecchietta worked in both miniature and monumental styles, so that works carried out in the same years for the sacristy of the Ospedale di Santa Maria della Scala, Siena, show differing forms of expression. The painted panels of the sacristy’s reliquary cabinet are by at least two artists, but those on the exterior bearing local Sienese saints are closer to Vecchietta’s style: Blessed Agostino Novello and Blessed Catherine of Siena are certainly autograph panels. Although damaged, the frescoes of 1446-49 show a contrasting spaciousness. Christ blessing, Evangelists, Doctors of the Church and Prophets are depicted on the vault of the sacristy, while on the walls are Old and New Testament scenes and the Last Judgement.

The picture shows a wall with the Trinity and an Old Testament scene below.

Vecchietta worked in both miniature and monumental styles, so that works carried out in the same years for the sacristy of the Ospedale di Santa Maria della Scala, Siena, show differing forms of expression. The painted panels of the sacristy’s reliquary cabinet are by at least two artists, but those on the exterior bearing local Sienese saints are closer to Vecchietta’s style: Blessed Agostino Novello and Blessed Catherine of Siena are certainly autograph panels. Although damaged, the frescoes of 1446-49 show a contrasting spaciousness. Christ blessing, Evangelists, Doctors of the Church and Prophets are depicted on the vault of the sacristy, while on the walls are Old and New Testament scenes and the Last Judgement.

Vecchietta worked in both miniature and monumental styles, so that works carried out in the same years for the sacristy of the Ospedale di Santa Maria della Scala, Siena, show differing forms of expression. The painted panels of the sacristy’s reliquary cabinet are by at least two artists, but those on the exterior bearing local Sienese saints are closer to Vecchietta’s style: Blessed Agostino Novello and Blessed Catherine of Siena are certainly autograph panels. Although damaged, the frescoes of 1446-49 show a contrasting spaciousness. Christ blessing, Evangelists, Doctors of the Church and Prophets are depicted on the vault of the sacristy, while on the walls are Old and New Testament scenes and the Last Judgement.

Vecchietta worked in both miniature and monumental styles, so that works carried out in the same years for the sacristy of the Ospedale di Santa Maria della Scala, Siena, show differing forms of expression. The painted panels of the sacristy’s reliquary cabinet are by at least two artists, but those on the exterior bearing local Sienese saints are closer to Vecchietta’s style: Blessed Agostino Novello and Blessed Catherine of Siena are certainly autograph panels. Although damaged, the frescoes of 1446-49 show a contrasting spaciousness. Christ blessing, Evangelists, Doctors of the Church and Prophets are depicted on the vault of the sacristy, while on the walls are Old and New Testament scenes and the Last Judgement.

In 1477 Vecchietta succeeded in his petition of the previous year to build a burial chapel to his own design for himself and his wife in Santa Maria della Scala, the church of the Ospedale della Scala, Siena. On the altar was placed the great bronze figure of the Risen Christ, which now adorns the high altar of the church. Behind hung his panel of the Virgin and Child with Sts Peter, Paul, Lawrence and Francis (now Pinacoteca Nazionale, Siena), the two last being the name-saints of Vecchietta and his wife Francesca. It is remarkable that he signed the bronze as painter and the panel as sculptor, in a way that proclaims his mastery of both media and also their inter-reliance.

Despite the damaged condition of the painting, the original splendour of the figures grouped harmoniously within their golden apse can still be estimated.