NEROCCIO (Bartolomeo LANDI)
Sienese painter, born in 1447, died in 1500, also active as a sculptor (statue of St Catherine, 1470, Siena, Oratory of Fonte Branda; Testa-Piccolomini monument, 1485, Siena, Cathedral).
A pupil of Vecchietta and, until 1475, a fellow artist of Francesco di Giorgio Martini, whose kinsman he was, he was influenced—like them—in the incisiveness of his outlines and the modelling of his drapery by the Florentine sculptural tradition; but he softened its rigour through subtle chiaroscuro transitions that diffused a characteristic luminosity through his compositions. This luminosity is well matched by the typology of his Madonnas, of delicate and aristocratic beauty, their faces barely animated by a smile. Two panels in the Siena Gallery (nos. 282 and 278) and one in the church of Montisi (Siena), all three signed and dated respectively to 1478, 1492 and 1496, as well as the design for the Sibyl of Hellespont on the floor of Siena Cathedral (1483), constitute the principal milestones of his documented activity. Of the many works attributed to him, it will suffice to recall the Stories of St Bernardino and the Stories of St Benedict (in the Palazzo Comunale of Siena and the Uffizi respectively), together with the Annunciation at Yale University, which are thought to have been executed in collaboration with Francesco di Giorgio and therefore before 1475; the Biccherna panel in the State Archives of Siena, dated 1496; the Madonna (no. 281) in the Siena Gallery, the Madonna and Saints in the Kress Collection, New York; the Claudia in the National Gallery, Washington, and the Female Portrait in the same gallery, one of the few portraits of the Sienese school of the 15th century. — See pl. CXIV.