Some of the Basilica’s magnificent paintings are a testament to the devotion to St. Francis and his friars and, therefore, also of St Bernardino and the Observants’ dedication to the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of God.
On view in the first chapel on the left there is the Madonna with Child and Angels, painted around 1455 by
Sano di Pietro, a prolific artist from Siena with an extraordinary mastery in drawing and in the use of colours. The infant Christ, tenderly clinging to his Mother’s cloak, is holding a fruit, most probably an apple, symbol of his victory over the original sin, achieved through his death and resurrection; the Child’s red robes and the sad and pensive gaze of the Blessed Virgin allude to the Passion of Christ.
The same artist also made the altarpiece above the altar in the third chapel on the right portraying the Madonna with Child between St Bernardino and St Jerome, which dates back to the mid-fifteenth century. As in the aforementioned work, even this painting bears a strong reference to the Holy Passion, which in this case is represented by the Goldfinch held by Jesus: the legend goes that the little bird had pricked itself while it was removing the thorns from Jesus’ brow after the crown had been placed on his head during crucifixion. In the process the bird stained itself with the Saviour’s blood, and from that day the head feathers have remained scarlet. And red is also the colour of the refined drape that covers the throne on which the Blessed Virgin is seated, whose expression reveals the same sadness noticed in the previous painting. To the Blessed Virgin’s right is San Bernardino, emaciated by his life of penance, holding the tablet he usually exhibited during his sermons, today displayed in the nearby Museum. On the left instead there is St. Jerome, Doctor of the Church and first translator of the Bible, a paradigm of Christian knowledge and a great penitent hermit; for many years he lived in the desert dedicated to his prayers, to abstinence and to his studies. The Saint’s ascetic writings were believed to be particularly in keeping with the reforms of the Regular Observance, thus hermitages and places of worship of the Order were given his name.
The third altarpiece dedicated to the Blessed Virgin, in the fourth chapel on the right, was not actually made for the Basilica but for the suppressed church of San Maurizio in Siena. In 1822 the work of art was bestowed to the Observants, in order to compensate the spoliation of the convent during Napoleonic suppressions. The extraordinary triptych represents the Madonna with Child between St Ambrose and St Jerome and was painted in 1436 by an artist conventionally known as the “Master of the Observance”, today identified by a number of scholars in the very same
Sano di Pietro in his early works. Some parts of the woodwork have gone missing while the predella, representing Christ’s crucifixion and two scenes from the life of SS. Ambrose and Jerome, are at the Pinacoteca Nazionale in Siena.
Unlike the two previous works, the Child is holding a scroll with the inscription Ego Sum, revealing his divinity; Mary thus becomes the image of the Church that discloses Jesus to mankind, sided by Ambrose and Jerome, two of the Fathers of the Western Church, figures who greatly influenced the church in the early centuries with their writings, sermons and life. The ecclesiological value of the altarpieces is confirmed by the presence, in the central cusp, of the Blessing Christ and, at the sides, of SS Peter and Paul, princes of the Apostles. Above, in the two medallions, are representations of the Archangel Gabriel and the Virgin Annunciate: once complete with the predella, the altarpiece would have represented, when reading from top to bottom, the Mystery of Christ through the Annunciation, the Incarnation and the Crucifixion.