The Stigmatisation of St Francis

religious

Stefano di Giovanni, known as Sassetta, was among the leading Sienese artists of the century. In 1437 he received one of the most extensive, and expensive, commissions in Sienese fifteenth-century painting: a double-sided polyptych for the church of San Francesco in Borgo San Sepolcro (the native town of his younger contemporary Piero della Francesca). The figures and the scenes were to be specified by the friars.

Loading map…

About the Artist

Sassetta

1394 – 1450

Sassetta (Stefano di Giovanni), perhaps the greatest of the early 15th century Sienese painters. He mingles an innate conservatism, especially in his architectural structures, with a delight in the svelte forms of International Gothic figure design, and in the clarity and unity of Renaissance pictorial space. The essentially 14 th century basis of his style, the dreamlike blending of reality and unreality, of graceful calm and visionary fervour, are all epitomized in his dismembered masterpiece, the double-sided altarpiece of 1337-44 for S. Francesco, Borgo S. Sepolcro (part in the Louvre, Paris and National Gallery, London).

View all works →