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Madonna con Bambino tra i Santi Antonio Abate, Bernardino, Francesco e Sabina Pienza
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Artist: Giovanni di Paolo
Year: 1463
Current location: Duomo
Original location: Duomo
DESCRIPTIVE INFORMATION
Giovanni di Paolo's painting, depicting the Madonna and Child, Saint Bernardino, Saint Anthony Abbot, Saint Francis, and Saint Sabina, and a Pietà of Christ in the lunette, is enclosed within a richly carved and gilded wooden frame and is dated 1463, as indicated by the inscription at the bottom of the central panel. The altarpiece was created for one of the six altars erected by Pius II in the new cathedral of Pienza, decorated by the most important painters of the time, such as Sano di Pietro, Matteo di Giovanni, Lorenzo di Pietro, and Giovanni di Paolo. The paintings, created by the 1460s, were intended to meet the aesthetic demands of the cathedral's new architectural style, with frames no longer cusped but "all'antica." However, the "visionary" Giovanni di Paolo struggles to adapt to the Renaissance perspective culture already experimented with by Vecchietta and Matteo di Giovanni. The painting is nevertheless one of the painter's masterpieces, in the abstraction of the figures "cut out" from the gold background and in the dramatic image of the Pietà in the lunette, set in a barren, lunar landscape, reminiscent of the Sienese Crete.
Madonna con Bambino tra i Santi Antonio Abate, Bernardino, Francesco e Sabina.jpeg)