NEROCCIO di Bartolomeo LANDI. — Sienese painter, born in 1447, died in 1500, also active as a sculptor (statue of S. Caterina, 1470, Siena, Oratorio di Fonte Branda; Testa-Piccolomini monument, 1485, Siena, Duomo).
A pupil of Vecchietta and, until 1475, artistic companion of Francesco di Giorgio Martini, whose brother-in-law he was, he reflects, like them, in the incisiveness of his contours and the modeling of his draperies, the influence of Florentine plasticism; but he softens its severity through subtle transitions of chiaroscuro that suffuse the composition with a distinctive luminosity. The typology of his Madonnas, of delicate and aristocratic beauty, their faces barely stirred by a smile, harmonizes perfectly with II. Two politici in the Siena Gallery (nos. 282 and 278) and one in the church of Montisi (Siena), all three signed and dated respectively 1478, 1492, and 1496, together with the drawing for the Sibilla Ellenpontica in the pavement of Siena Cathedral (1483), constitute the principal stages of his documented activity. Of the many works attributed to him, it will suffice to recall the Storie di s. Bernardino and the Storie di s. Benedetto (respectively in the Palazzo comunale of Siena and at the Uffizi), which, together with the Annunciazione of Yale University, are considered to have been executed in collaboration with Fr. di Giorgio and therefore before 1475; the Biccherna tablet in the Archivio di Stato of Siena, dated 1480; the Madonna (no. 281) in the Siena Gallery, the Madonna e Santi in the Kress collection in New York; the Claudia in the National Gallery in Washington and the Ritratto femminile in the same gallery, one of the few portraits of the Sienese school of the fifteenth century. — Vedi tav. CXIV.