Virgin and Child with Saints Jerome, Bernardino of Siena, and Angels

Sano di Pietro · c. 1455

Medium

Tempera on panel

Original size

Panel with applied frame: 79 × 57 cm (31 1/8 × 22 1/2 in.)

Currently held

Art Institute of Chicago

Movement

Italian Renaissance

This intimate devotional panel brings together the Virgin and Child in tender proximity with two of the Church's most venerated figures, set against the luminous gold ground that defines the Sienese tradition at its height. Sano di Pietro spent nearly his entire career in Siena, working in a style that consciously preserved the refinement of earlier masters like Sassetta even as Florentine painters were moving toward naturalism. His figures have a characteristic grace — softly modelled faces, elongated hands, drapery that flows with decorative precision. In this panel, the hierarchical arrangement of saints flanking the Madonna is offset by the warmth in how the Christ child reaches outward, giving the composition an intimacy unusual for its formal structure. The inclusion of Saint Bernardino of Siena is historically significant: Bernardino was canonized in 1450, and Sano di Pietro — who had a close relationship with the Franciscan order — became one of the first painters to depict him as a fully recognised saint, producing several works in the years immediately following the canonization. Our hand-painted oil reproduction translates this tempera panel into oil on canvas, preserving the luminosity of the original palette, the fine detailing of the haloes, and the serene character that made Sano di Pietro's devotional works so prized in fifteenth-century Siena.