Pope Pius II, frontispiece to a Constitution of the Sienese Church of the Year 1464

Vecchietta (Lorenzo di Pietro di Giovanni) · 1464; possibly 19th century copy

Medium

Manuscript cutting in tempera and gold leaf on parchment

Original size

31 × 22.3 cm (12 1/4 × 8 13/16 in.)

Currently held

Art Institute of Chicago

Movement

Italian Renaissance

This intimate frontispiece captures Pope Pius II with the ceremonial gravity befitting a man who began as a Sienese humanist and rose to lead the Catholic Church, rendered in the glowing palette of mid-fifteenth century Italian manuscript art. Vecchietta — born Lorenzo di Pietro di Giovanni around 1410 — was one of Siena's most versatile Renaissance talents, working as painter, sculptor, and architect across a career that shaped the city's visual culture for decades. His tempera technique, applied here to parchment with gold leaf highlights, reflects a tradition rooted in Byzantine icon painting but fully absorbed into the Sienese love of refined line and luminous color. The result is less a portrait than a devotional image: authoritative, precise, and quietly radiant. Pius II was himself a native Sienese — born Enea Silvio Piccolomini — which lends the commission an unmistakable civic pride alongside its religious function, the city honoring one of its own through its finest craftsman. The attribution to Vecchietta remains debated; the work may be a careful nineteenth-century copy of the original, though the quality of execution argues for a skilled hand trained in period conventions. Our hand-painted oil reproduction translates the warmth of tempera and gold into a medium built to endure, bringing this rare archival image into any home with the depth it deserves.