Evangelists on the vault

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.