ANDREA di NICCOLÒ di JACOPO. - Sienese painter, born about 1440 and recorded until 1514. No trace remains of the various works he executed in Siena and Massa Marittima and mentioned in documents of 1470, 1477, 1490, 1499, and 1500; however, the Pinacoteca of Siena possesses a large altarpiece (no. 298) with the Madonna and Four Saints, signed and dated 1500, and the same Gallery attributes to him with certainty a Crucifixion (no. 368) dated 1502. Another work certainly by him, dated 1510, is a tempera altarpiece on canvas with the Madonna between SS. Crispin and Crispinian, executed for the workers of the Sienese shoemakers’ guild and preserved in the church of S. Mustiola.
Numerous other paintings have rightly been attributed to him, also because, although he was of modest stature, his style is highly individual and immediately recognizable. Vecchietta (v.), of whom A. may have been a pupil, with increasingly Neroccio di Bartolomeo (v.) Benvenuto di Giovanni (v.). His works, very carefully executed, reveal a gentle and genuine religiosity full of popular grace, and a sweetly imaginative and contemplative temperament in the landscape backgrounds inspired, like those of the Sienese painters of that period,
by Umbrian painting. Moreover, some of the very rare temperas on canvas of the Sienese School belong to A. di N.