Marriage of St Francis to Lady Poverty

religious

The panel is from the back of a polyptych executed for the church of the convent of San Francesco at Borgo San Sepolcro. This panel, one of the eight smaller scenes accompanying the St Francis in Ecstasy on the back of the double-sided altarpiece, shows the saint stepping forward to place a ring on the finger of Poverty, who stands between Chastity and Obedience, as the three float off for celestial regions. Poverty glances back sweetly toward her bridegroom.

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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).

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