Description
The Oratory of San Bernardino stands in Piazza San Francesco in Siena: a small brick building with two frescoed halls, one above the other.
Next to it, in the adjoining rooms, is the Diocesan Museum of Sacred Art: the two are visited together, and are worth the stop for the sixteenth-century frescoes and some of the oldest Sienese icons.
Here the Sienese friar Bernardino preached to the crowds, as a painting by Sano di Pietro in the Museo dell'Opera del Duomo also recalls. When he was canonized, in 1450, the local confraternity took his name and, in the second half of the fifteenth century, decided to build an oratory for him.
Outside is a simple brick facade with a travertine portal dated 1574 and, high up, the radiant disc with the monogram of Christ dear to the saint. Inside, the upper floor, the older one, is the surprise: a coffered ceiling with cherub heads and wooden walls with stucco.
Between the pilasters runs the cycle of the Stories of the Virgin, painted between 1518 and 1532 by three great Sienese artists: Sodoma, Girolamo del Pacchia and Beccafumi.
In the scenes you can clearly see the echoes of Michelangelo's and Raphael's Roman works, the Sistine vault and the Vatican Stanze.
On either side of the altar are a small panel with the monogram, which tradition says belonged to the saint, and a thirteenth-century Byzantine icon of the Virgin and Child. On the lower floor the vault shows the Madonna protecting Siena with Saint Bernardino and Saint Catherine.
The Diocesan Museum offers an overview of Sienese art between the thirteenth and eighteenth centuries.
In the first room are the Madonna of Tressa, the oldest icon in Sienese painting, from around 1235, and the famous Madonna of the Milk by Ambrogio Lorenzetti. In the old sacristy are also kept some objects that belonged to Saint Bernardino.
Next to it, in the adjoining rooms, is the Diocesan Museum of Sacred Art: the two are visited together, and are worth the stop for the sixteenth-century frescoes and some of the oldest Sienese icons.
Here the Sienese friar Bernardino preached to the crowds, as a painting by Sano di Pietro in the Museo dell'Opera del Duomo also recalls. When he was canonized, in 1450, the local confraternity took his name and, in the second half of the fifteenth century, decided to build an oratory for him.
Outside is a simple brick facade with a travertine portal dated 1574 and, high up, the radiant disc with the monogram of Christ dear to the saint. Inside, the upper floor, the older one, is the surprise: a coffered ceiling with cherub heads and wooden walls with stucco.
Between the pilasters runs the cycle of the Stories of the Virgin, painted between 1518 and 1532 by three great Sienese artists: Sodoma, Girolamo del Pacchia and Beccafumi.
In the scenes you can clearly see the echoes of Michelangelo's and Raphael's Roman works, the Sistine vault and the Vatican Stanze.
On either side of the altar are a small panel with the monogram, which tradition says belonged to the saint, and a thirteenth-century Byzantine icon of the Virgin and Child. On the lower floor the vault shows the Madonna protecting Siena with Saint Bernardino and Saint Catherine.
The Diocesan Museum offers an overview of Sienese art between the thirteenth and eighteenth centuries.
In the first room are the Madonna of Tressa, the oldest icon in Sienese painting, from around 1235, and the famous Madonna of the Milk by Ambrogio Lorenzetti. In the old sacristy are also kept some objects that belonged to Saint Bernardino.