The thread connecting many of the works in the Basilica dell’Osservanza is the devotion to Saint Bernardino and the Franciscan saints.
The painting by Pietro di Giovanni d'Ambrogio in the third chapel on the right with the great Sienese saint in the centre is particularly significant as it was made in 1444, the year of his death. The image, one of the very first paintings of St Bernardino, can be considered to be his “portrait” made by the painter on the basis of personal acquaintance and memory, thus becoming the archetype of all following representations. The emaciated figure, clothed in a modest habit secured at the waist, his face haggard from fasting and his mouth without any teeth, will be the distinctive features of his iconography, in addition to the Name of Jesus on the background of a blazing sun. While Renaissance Humanism placed man at the centre of creation, Bernardino reaffirmed the absolute supremacy of Christ and the subordination of all things to Him and in view of Him. In this sense, the inscription in the book he is holding, taken from the letter of Saint Paul to the Colossians, is emblematic: “Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth” (Que sursum sunt sapite, non que super terram). The reputation of holiness, which was already widespread while Bernardino was still alive, and the extraordinary veneration of his contemporaries explain the presence of a halo (traditionally associated to saints) in the painting some time before his canonization which took place in 1450.
The same chapel holds a painting made in the fifteenth century by Girolamo di Benvenuto depicting Saint Elizabeth of Hungary, patron of the Franciscan Order, who lived in the thirteenth century. The daughter of King Andrew II of Hungary, she married at an early age and was a devoted wife; mother to three children, she was widowed at the age of twenty. She became a Franciscan Tertiary, engaging in acts of mercy and dedicating her entire life to the poor and the sick. Here she is portrayed in the habit worn by Franciscan Tertiaries and a bunch of roses, alluding to the Miracle of the Roses: one day, while she was walking down the street with her apron full of bread for the poor, she came across her husband who asked her what she was carrying. Elizabeth opened her apron to reveal some magnificent roses. A devotee in pilgrim clothes is kneeling at the Saint’s feet, and close by there is a crown, the symbol of her royalty.
The founder of the Order, Saint Francis of Assisi, is represented in the neighbouring chapel, the second from the right, among the figures in the polychrome terracotta sculpture of the “Lamentation Over the Dead Christ”, a sixteenth-century work ascribed to
Giovanni di Paolo Neri.
Two important Franciscan saints are portrayed in the magnificent glazed terracotta roundels, dating to the fourteenth century, made by Andrea della Robbia and hanging on the sides of the entrance portal: Saint Bonaventure and Saint Louis of Toulouse. The first, depicted while giving a blessing and holding a book, was a Minister General of the Order of Friars Minor and a great theologian, author of the so-called Legenda Major, the official biography of Saint Francis, written to provide a genuine interpretation of the Saint’s life. Louis, the son of the king of Naples Charles of Anjou, was taken prisoner as a boy by the king of Aragon where he became acquainted with the Franciscan Order; once he was freed, he decided to live his life according to the Franciscan rule of poverty, devoting himself to the needy and the outcasts. He therefore renounced the throne to become a priest and, soon after, Bishop of Toulouse, as indicated by the crosier with which he is portrayed. These are the only two roundels that survived the cycle dedicated to the saints which used to be in the calottes of the nave’s covering but which were destroyed during bombings in 1944 and replaced by reproductions made by Sienese sculptors Giulio Corsini and Bruno Buracchini.