His first documented work, executed between 1 July 1423 and Dec. 1426, consisted of a large triptych featuring in the center the Triumph of the Most Holy Sacrament surmounted by the Coronation of the Virgin and on the sides St. Anthony Abbot and St. Thomas Aquinas surmounted by the Annunciation; all connected by pilasters with the Four Saints of Siena and the Four Doctors of the Church, by putti, and equipped with a predella with the Last Supper and small scenes of St. Anthony and St. Thomas. The complex was dismembered and dispersed in 1816, and only some minor parts are preserved in Siena, Budapest, the Vatican, and Barnard Castle. Between 1430 and 1432 Sassetta painted for Siena Cathedral the Madonna of the Snows, later moved to Chiusdino and then (1956) to the Contini Bonacossi collection in Florence; from 1433 is the Crucifix for the church of S. Martino in Siena, destroyed in 1826 and of which the capriccios and the base small scene are preserved in the Chigi Saracini collection in Siena. From this period, or a little later, date the polyptych for the church of S. Domenico in Cortona and various Madonnas (Museum of Grosseto, Pinacoteca of Siena, etc.). The masterpiece of Sassetta’s final period is the large polyptych executed for the Franciscans of Borgo S. Sepolcro (1444); dismembered in 1752 and dispersed in 1810, it has been ideally reconstructed with absolute certainty only after the very recent (1951) discovery in a French private collection of three panels: a Madonna with angel musicians, a St. Anthony of Padua and a St. John the Evangelist, to which were added the figures of the Baptist and the Blessed Ranieri Rasini in the Berenson collection, to which also belongs the central panel of the reverse, with St. Francis in ecstasy, originally flanked by eight small scenes of St. Francis (one now in the Condé Museum in Chantilly and the others in the National Gallery in London). The Coronation of Mary above the Porta Romana in Siena, completed after Sassetta’s death by Sano di Pietro, was destroyed in 1944, but the autograph part survived, namely a Glory of Angel Musicians in the arch below. Various works, including the well-known Birth of Mary in the Collegiate Church of Asciano and a triptych (1436) in the basilica of the Osservanza in Siena, which were once considered among Sassetta’s most significant, have recently been attributed to an unknown figure, akin to Sassetta, known as the “Master of the Osservanza.”
Sassetta is the greatest Sienese painter of the 15th century. Although trained in Siena, probably within the circle of late Gothic painters (Gualtieri di Giovanni da Pisa, Nicola da Naldo, Benedetto di Bindo, etc.), he must have had an early and not superficial knowledge of the styles not only of Gentile da Fabriano and Masolino, but also of Masaccio himself, Brunelleschi, and Donatello. This is demonstrated by his constant search for a plastic three-dimensionality and a concrete spatiality evident from his earliest works. However, Sassetta cannot be said to be entirely a Renaissance artist, because his naive love for the finely elaborated detail and his almost mystical inclination toward dream, his exquisitely decorative taste and abstractive tendencies, all characteristic of the Sienese spirit, prevented him from achieving that unity and organic vision pursued by the Florentine innovators. A consummate technician and an exceptionally refined colorist, Sassetta also demonstrated original narrative qualities. - See pl. CXXIX.
SASSETTA - SAXONY