The Sienese Saints of the Fifteenth Century

Buonconvento, Museo d'Arte Sacra of Arbia Valley

The presence inside the museum in Buonconvento of an altarpiece on which Sano di Pietro has flanked the Virgin and Child with the saints Bernardine and Catherine of Siena offers the occasion to delve more deeply into the topic of these two “new” Sienese fifteenth-century saints.

The  Franciscan Bernardino degli Albizzeschi (born in Massa Marittima in 1380, but Sienese by adoption) was one of the most famous preachers of the fifteenth century. After dying “in the odor of sanctity” in L’Aquila in 1444, he was canonized just a few years later, in 1450, to the great joy of the Sienese.

Little more than a decade later, in 1461, the Sienese pope Pius II canonized also the Dominican nun Caterina Benincasa (Siena, 1347-1380), who is celebrated today mainly for having fostered the return of the papacy from Avignon, but in the fifteenth century was greatly venerated by the Dominican order for, among other things, having been given the honor of miraculously receiving the stigmata.
Sano di Pietro’s altarpiece, datable to the 1460s, bears good witness to the “success” of the two new saints, who would soon join the traditional patrons Ansanus, Crescentius, Sabinus, and Victor as the true advocates for the city of Siena.

Bernardine’s popularity resulted in the portrait of this gaunt friar (usually shown with the panel of the monogram of Christ which he would hold up to the crowd during his sermons) becoming a favorite subject for altarpieces, starting immediately after his death and even before his canonization, as demonstrated by numerous works on display in the exhibition and others in museums in and around Siena. Among his most authoritative “iconographers” were Sassetta, Pietro di Giovanni Ambrosi, Sano di Pietro and Vecchietta, who unquestionably knew him personally.

The Virgin and Child Enthroned with Saints Bernardine & Catherine

Sano di Pietro
tempera on wood
from Buonconvento (Siena)
church of Santi Pietro and Paolo (?),1465-70

Perhaps destined originally for the church of Santi Pietro e Paolo in Buonconvento, the altarpiece bears witness to the iconographical success of the new Sienese saints Bernardine and Catherine. Bernardine appears barefoot, wearing his Franciscan habit and exhibiting the panel with the monogram of Jesus; Catherine wears the black-and-white habit of the Dominicans and carries a book and a lily, the symbol of her purity. The gold-ground panel shows the most typical traits of Sano di Pietro’s style in the rendering of the precious fabrics and the brooch fastening the Virgin’s cloak, all in a mystical atmosphere that makes few concessions to the innovations of the Renaissance.

The Virgin and Child with Saint Apollonia, Saint Bernardine, Angels

Sano di Pietro
tempera on wood
from Murlo (Siena)
cchurch of Sant’Andrea a Frontignano, 1450-55

Coming from the church of Sant’Andrea a Frontignano, near Murlo, this delightful painting was certainly made for private devotion. Following the tradition of medieval painting, the Virgin and Child are shown larger than the other figures, who include four angels and Saints Apollonia and Bernardine of Siena. The presence of the Franciscan, by this point shown with a halo, ensures a date for the painting after his canonization (1450). Nonetheless, Sano di Pietro demonstrates here all the freshness of his best period in the lively colors and miniaturist, precious, elegant tone of the composition.

The Coronation of the Virgin

Sano di Pietro
tempera on wood
from Monteroni d’Arbia (Siena)
church of S. Albano a Quinciano, 1450-55

It is still not clear if this panel was originally an isolated painting imitating thirteenth-century altar dossals or was the lunette of a monumental altarpiece. What is certain is that it is a fully typical, mature work by Sano di Pietro, a master as prolific as he was traditional, who is appreciated above all for the quality of his colors and working of the parts in gold of his panels, which emanate a clear nostalgia for the great fourteenth-century season of Sienese paintings. It cannot be ruled out that there was an older archetype also for the composition of this scene in which Sano illustrates the Coronation of the Virgin, an episode of sacred history dear to the hearts of the Sienese, who venerated Mary as their advocate from the time of the Battle of Montaperti (1260).

The Assumption of the Virgin with Saints Stephen and Sigismund

The Montepertuso Master (Pietro di Giovanni Ambrosi?)
tempera on wood
from Murlo (Siena)
chapel of La Befa, 1440-49

The provenance of this painting is the source of the conventional name given to the artist known as the Montepertuso Master, who in all probability, in light of the keenness of the characters and lively colors, can be identified as Pietro di Giovanni d’Ambrogio, a follower of Sassetta. Datable to the 1440s, the altarpiece bears effective witness, in format and iconography, to the continuity with fourteenth-century painting that has numerous examples in the museum in Asciano and is examined also in a section of the exhibition in Siena. The solution of a triptych with two lateral saints and a narrative central scene borrows from the fourteenth-century models of the altarpieces made for the altars of the patron saints in Siena Cathedral, just as the Assumption in the main panel alludes to the prototype of the lost Assumption defined more than a century earlier by Simone Martini on the front of the outer Camollia city gate in Siena.

The Virgin and Child with Two Angels

Matteo di Giovanni
tempera on wood
from Buonconvento (Siena)
church of Percenna, 1470-75

This delightful panel for private devotion is a veritable manifesto of Matteo di Giovanni’s style in his maturity, coming as it does in the 1470s. Against an atmospheric sky with scattered clouds appears one of those so purely Sienese, elegantly elongated Madonnas that appealed to Bernard Berenson and the circle of English-speaking art lovers who shared with him an enthusiasm for the Sienese “primitives.” Split between a very personal interest in the innovations brought by Donatello and the Florentines and his awareness of how greatly the Sienese continued to favor the more traditional images of the Virgin and Child, Matteo di Giovanni managed to calibrate a composition marked by great refinement, furnishing an excellent example of the type of painting for private devotion popular in Siena in the second half of the fifteenth century.