Virgin and Child with Saint Bernardino, Saint Jerome and Two Angels

The Virgin and Child appear with Saint Bernardino of Siena, Saint Jerome, and two angels in this panel at the Detroit Institute of Arts. Saint Bernardino, the great Franciscan preacher who died in 1444 and was canonized in 1450, was Siena"s most important local saint, and his image appears frequently in Sano di Pietro"s work. The saint"s presence dates the painting to after his canonization, making the inclusion in a Virgin and Child panel a statement of Sienese civic and religious pride.

The panel follows Sano"s established formula for multi-figure devotional works, with the Madonna centrally placed and saints arranged symmetrically. Bernardino"s lean, ascetic face is rendered with the distinctive characterization that Sano developed for this frequently depicted local saint. The gold ground and decorative details show the precision tooling techniques that Sienese painters maintained long after Florentine artists had abandoned gold backgrounds for painted skies.