Benvenuto di Giovanni, 'Saint Nicholas', 1479

Sienese painting of the second half of the fifteenth century blended the artistic ideals of its time with a continued reverence for the language of earlier Sienese art. Nowhere is this more true than in this triptych, painted in 1479 by Benvenuto di Giovanni.

Benvenuto has integrated a very contemporary interest in naturalism and perspective with a typically Sienese love of lavish materials, brilliant colours and decorative detail. In the central panel, the Virgin Mary is seated on an inlaid throne with the infant Christ on her knee; in the side panels Saint Peter and Saint Nicholas stand like statues on a marble parapet which runs across the triptych. The figures are set against burnished and tooled gold backgrounds, and all are spectacularly dressed in accordance with the Sienese passion for jewels and textiles – but they look convincingly solid underneath their clothes. The precise dresses to be worn and materials to be used were sometimes stipulated in artists‘ contracts.

The altarpiece is very characteristic of the paintings made by Benvenuto in the 1470s. He was a pupil of Vecchietta and his early style was heavily dependant on that of his master, but it was changed by the arrival of Liberale da Verona and Girolamo da Cremona in Siena in 1466 and 1470 respectively. These two Northern Italian illuminators (artists who painted illuminated manuscripts) came to contribute to one of the greatest artistic projects of the late fifteenth century: the decoration of the great series of choir books for Siena’s cathedral. The project attracted artists from near and far, and Benvenuto also worked on it.

There was no hard and fast division between painters and illuminators in Siena, and Liberale and Girolamo were of enormous importance in introducing a more progressive style that combined brilliant colours with minutely detailed technique. Close examination reveals that the pearls on the Virgin’s dress cast shadows, an idea derived from Girolamo’s trompe l’oeil border decorations.

The masterpieces from this sharply defined, highly detailed and decorative phase of Benvenuto’s career are the triptych from Montepertuso (dated 1475, now in the parish church of Vescovado di Murlo, near Siena), the Borghesi altarpiece in the church of San Domenico in Siena (1475–1477/78) and the National Gallery altarpiece. In this painting Benvenuto has reverted from the single unified space of the Borghesi altarpiece – the pala format – to a triptych with gilded ground (presumably at the request of the commissioner). We are not sure where this altarpiece was originally intended to be displayed. In the early nineteenth century it was apparently in the church of the Gesù at Orvieto, which was founded in 1618; it had perhaps been made for a church there.