BENEDETTO di BINDO. – A Sienese painter, originally from the Val d’Orcia, lame. He is mentioned in the brief of Sienese painters of 1380. In 1411–12 he worked, together with others, on the decoration of the sacristy of the Siena cathedral, and in 1414 he painted the Maestà of Porta Camollia. He died in Perugia on 19 Sept. 1417.
The only certain work of his that remains to us is the eight shutters for a reliquary cupboard, or “aliquiera,” once in the sacristy of the cathedral, now in the museum of the 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, availing himself of the help of Giovanni di Bindino, Adamo di Colino, and the gilders Lando di Stefano and Giusa di Frosino. On the inside of the shutters are painted eight scenes of the Invention and Exaltation of the Holy Cross, in honor of the most precious relic—a fragment of the wood of the Cross—kept in the cathedral, while the exterior, divided into thirty-two panels, bears an equal number of half-length figures of angels holding scrolls with the title of the relic preserved in the corresponding compartment of the cupboard. Although in the Stories of the Holy Cross of the “aliquiera” one notes a stiffening of the dignified academy of Taddeo di Bartolo, on which B. di B. was probably formed, they nonetheless remain