BENEDETTO di BINDO. - Sienese painter, originally from the Val d'Orcia, lame. He is mentioned in the Breve dei pittori senesi of 1389. In 1411-12 he worked, together with others, on the decoration of the sacristy of Siena Cathedral, and in 1414 he painted the Maestà of Porta Camollia. He died at Perugia on 19 Sept. 1417.
The only certain work by him that remains is the set of eight doors for a reliquary cabinet, or “arliquiera,” formerly in the sacristy of the Cathedral and now in the Museo dell'Opera of Siena: Bacci has recently reconstructed the history of this “complex and rare work of Sienese craftsmanship,” whose painted decoration was entrusted to B. di B., who completed it in 1412, with the assistance of Giovanni di Bindino, Adamo di Colino, and the gilders Lando di Stefano and Giusa di Frosino. On the inner sides of the doors are painted eight scenes from the Finding and Exaltation of the Holy Cross, in honor of the most precious relic—a fragment of the wood of the Cross—venerated in the Cathedral; the exterior, divided into thirty-two panels, bears an equal number of half-length figures of angels holding scrolls with the name of the relic preserved in the corresponding compartment of the cabinet. Although in the Stories of the Holy Cross of the “arliquiera” one perceives a stiffening of the dignified academic manner of Taddeo di Bartolo, under whom B. di B. was probably trained, they nevertheless suffice
to secure for their author an honorable place alongside, and perhaps above, the better-known Florentine illustrators of the same subject.