Sano di Pietro

Bichi Ruspoli Forteguerri collection, Siena, by 1904;

Private collection, Switzerland; 

Thence by descent.

Not seen in public since the seminal exhibition of Sienese art in 1904, this painting is one of the finest examples of the flanked Virgin and Child type by Sano di Pietro. Sano was one of the most prolific and successful artists of fifteenth-century Siena. He and his workshop produced works both for civic and religious institutions in city – including altarpieces, predelle, biccherna covers and manuscript illuminations – as well as paintings for private devotion, some of the most prized of which were depictions of the Virgin and Child, either alone or surrounded by angels or saints, as here. This painting contains all the qualities of Sano's best work – rich colours and patterns, particularly in the Child's robe; intricate decorative effects, especially in the haloes; and refined rendering of the figures' hair and flesh tones in tempera. The background retains its original gilding.

This composition, which harks back to the Sienese Trecento tradition, contains an unusually large number of accompanying saints and angels. One of the only other such panels to contain up to eight other figures, including San Bernardino (1380–1444) – the influential Franciscan priest and missionary of the previous generation common to Sano's multi-figure works and whom the artist had known personally – is the painting of slightly smaller dimensions in the Pinacoteca Nazionale, Siena.¹ The heads of the Virgin and Child recur in a number of Sano's paintings, suggesting that a cartoon may have been used by the master and his workshop to transfer this design. The pose of the Virgin and Child, though not repeated identically, is found in comparable devotional panels such as that in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York,² dated to 1465–70, where the figures are surrounded by Saints Jerome, Bernardino, John the Baptist, Anthony of Padua, and two angels; and another similar painting in the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney.³ In a photo of the present work recorded in the Fondazione Zeri, a painted insignia 'IR' (in ligature) is visible in the lower right corner, though this is no longer apparent.⁴

¹ Tempera on panel, gold ground, 80 x 54.5 cm.; inv. no. 263; http://catalogo.fondazionezeri.unibo.it/scheda/opera/18295/Sano%20di%20Pietro%2C%20Madonna%20con%20Bambino%20tra%20santa%20Margherita%2C%20san%20Giovanni%20Battista%2C%20san%20Bernardino%20da%20Siena%2C%20san%20Girolamo%20e%20angeli

² Tempera on panel, gold ground, overall 74 x 51.8 cm.; inv. no. 1975.1.42; https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/458982

³ Tempera on panel, gold ground, 60.5 x 43.2 cm.; inv. no. 151.1971; https://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/collection/works/151.1971/

⁴ http://catalogo.fondazionezeri.unibo.it/scheda/opera/18417/Sano%20di%20Pietro%2C%20Madonna%20con%20Bambino%20tra%20santi%20e%20angeli