Description
The Diocesan Museum of Sacred Art is in the rooms next to the Oratory of San Bernardino, in Piazza San Francesco, and gives you two visits in one. On one side, Sienese painting and sculpture from the 13th to the 18th century; on the other, an oratory frescoed by three great 16th-century painters.
The highlight is the upper floor of the oratory: between 1518 and 1532 Sodoma, Girolamo del Pacchia and Beccafumi painted the Stories of the Virgin here. In the scenes you can recognize echoes of Michelangelo's and Raphael's Roman works, above all the Sistine ceiling and the Vatican Stanze.
Up here the ceiling is coffered, with cherubs' heads, and the walls are wood with stucco work by Ventura Turapilli. On either side of the altar are a small panel with the monogram that tradition says belonged to the saint, and a 13th-century Byzantine icon.
The lower floor has a vault frescoed with the Madonna protecting Siena, Saint Bernardino and Saint Catherine, begun by Arcangelo Salimbeni and finished in 1580 by Francesco Vanni. The lunettes show scenes from Bernardino's life.
In the museum rooms the starting point is the Madonna of Tressa, from around 1235: the oldest icon in the Sienese painting tradition. A little further on is Ambrogio Lorenzetti's Madonna of the Milk, a famous 14th-century work.
Moving on to the 15th century you meet Sassetta's Madonna of Molli and an Annunciation by Matteo di Giovanni that faithfully reproduces Simone Martini's 14th-century one. Vecchietta signs a fresco Pietà and the same scene in polychrome wood.
In the vestibule, above an arch, is a Madonna and Child in polychrome terracotta by Jacopo della Quercia, from around 1420. In the old sacristy are works from the 15th to the 18th century, including a Christ Carrying the Cross by Beccafumi.
This is where people really did preach. Saint Bernardino used to speak in this place, and after his canonization in 1450 the confraternity took his name and decided to build the oratory. Outside you still see a brick facade with a travertine portal from 1574 and, high up, a radiating disc with the IHS monogram.
A curious detail: some small panels painted by Sodoma and Il Riccio, in the sacristy, were used as funeral biers. And a casket reliquary holds a few of the saint's belongings and his entrails, sent from L'Aquila, where Bernardino died and is buried.
Among the 18th-century canvases there is also the sketch for the fresco that Antonio Nasini and his brother Giuseppe Nicola painted in the late 17th century for the Antiporto di Camollia, later destroyed in the bombings of 1944.
The highlight is the upper floor of the oratory: between 1518 and 1532 Sodoma, Girolamo del Pacchia and Beccafumi painted the Stories of the Virgin here. In the scenes you can recognize echoes of Michelangelo's and Raphael's Roman works, above all the Sistine ceiling and the Vatican Stanze.
Up here the ceiling is coffered, with cherubs' heads, and the walls are wood with stucco work by Ventura Turapilli. On either side of the altar are a small panel with the monogram that tradition says belonged to the saint, and a 13th-century Byzantine icon.
The lower floor has a vault frescoed with the Madonna protecting Siena, Saint Bernardino and Saint Catherine, begun by Arcangelo Salimbeni and finished in 1580 by Francesco Vanni. The lunettes show scenes from Bernardino's life.
In the museum rooms the starting point is the Madonna of Tressa, from around 1235: the oldest icon in the Sienese painting tradition. A little further on is Ambrogio Lorenzetti's Madonna of the Milk, a famous 14th-century work.
Moving on to the 15th century you meet Sassetta's Madonna of Molli and an Annunciation by Matteo di Giovanni that faithfully reproduces Simone Martini's 14th-century one. Vecchietta signs a fresco Pietà and the same scene in polychrome wood.
In the vestibule, above an arch, is a Madonna and Child in polychrome terracotta by Jacopo della Quercia, from around 1420. In the old sacristy are works from the 15th to the 18th century, including a Christ Carrying the Cross by Beccafumi.
This is where people really did preach. Saint Bernardino used to speak in this place, and after his canonization in 1450 the confraternity took his name and decided to build the oratory. Outside you still see a brick facade with a travertine portal from 1574 and, high up, a radiating disc with the IHS monogram.
A curious detail: some small panels painted by Sodoma and Il Riccio, in the sacristy, were used as funeral biers. And a casket reliquary holds a few of the saint's belongings and his entrails, sent from L'Aquila, where Bernardino died and is buried.
Among the 18th-century canvases there is also the sketch for the fresco that Antonio Nasini and his brother Giuseppe Nicola painted in the late 17th century for the Antiporto di Camollia, later destroyed in the bombings of 1944.