Miracle of St Louis of Toulouse
by VECCHIETTA, Tempera on wood
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).