Saint Peter

Andrea Vanni was a Sienese painter and political figure who served on the city's governing council and maintained a close personal friendship with Saint Catherine of Siena. This Saint Peter of around 1390, now in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, reflects the continuation of Sienese Gothic traditions into the late Trecento, a period when Siena's artistic culture maintained its distinctive identity even as Florence increasingly dominated Tuscan painting. The apostolic subject suggests an ecclesiastical commission.

Executed in egg tempera on panel with gold ground, the figure of Saint Peter displays Andrea Vanni's characteristic blend of Sienese linear elegance with a somewhat harder, more schematic handling of form that marks his late career.