Agostino Novello Installing the First Rector

1442 · Pellegrinaio, Spedale di Santa Maria della Scala, Siena

religious

This fresco is located in the 4th bay 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. The role of Priamo in the decoration of the Pellegrinaio is altogether unclear.

Loading map…

Agostino Novello Installing the First Rector

About the Artist

Priamo della Quercia

Italian painter and illuminator, the younger brother of the celebrated Sienese sculptor Jacopo della Quercia. (His real name was Priamo di Pietro d'Angelo della Quercia.) His earliest documented work, a fresco in the Pellegrinaio of the Spedale di Santa Maria della Scala in Siena (paid for in 1442) shows the influence of Domenico di Bartolo, who was in charge of the decoration and is sometimes thought to have been his master. In the same year he received a commission in Volterra, where he is recorded between 1440 and 1467. Priamo's surviving works show the influence of such Sienese masters as Taddeo di Bartolo and Domenico di Bartolo, as well as the Florentine Lorenzo Monaco, Paolo Schiavo, and Domenico Veneziano.

View all works →