St Bernardino Preaching

religious

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.

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About the Artist

Vecchietta

1410 – 1480

Vecchietta (Lorenzo di Pietro di Giovanni), one of the outstanding Sienese artists of the 15th century, a painter, sculptor, architect, and military engineer. He was formerly believed to have been born c. 1412 in the Tuscan town of Castiglione d'Orcia, but in 1970 he was identified with the Lorenzo di Pietro di Giovanni who was baptized in Siena in 1410. He was probably trained by Sassetta, but he also came under the influence of Florentine art and his large-scale paintings have a monumentality rare in Siena in the quattrocento. As a sculptor he worked in wood and marble and late in his career in bronze, this change in medium reflecting the influence of Donatello, who was in Siena 1457-59. The Risen Christ (Sta Maria della Scala, Siena, 1476) has something of Donatello's sinewy expressiveness. Donatello's influence may also account for the strength and plasticity of Vecchietta's later paintings, such as the St Catherine in the Town Hall, Siena, and the Assumption in Pienza Cathedral, both dating from 1461/2. Another side to Vecchietta's talent is seen in his delightful illuminations in a manuscript of Dante's Divine Comedy (British Library, London, c.1440).

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