St Bernardino Preaching

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.