VECCHIETTA, LORENZO DI PIETRO, detto il. — Painter, sculptor, and architect, b. at Castiglione di Val d'Orcia in 1412, d. at Siena on 6 June 1480.
In 1441 he began working for the hospital of Siena (the Pellegrino ward, the reliquary cabinet, and the great sacristy); around 1450 he was entrusted with the painted decoration of the vault and apse in the Baptistery of the Cathedral. After 1457, V. sculpture, executing the marble statues of ss. Peter and Paul (Loggia dei Mercanti, 1460–62), of the recumbent s. Caterina, in painted terracotta (c. 1461, in the oratory of the Compagnia di S. Caterina della Notte), and the bronze tomb figures of Bishop Girolamo Foscari (church of S. Maria del Popolo in Rome, 1464) and the jurist Mariano Sozzini il
Vecchio (Museo del Bargello in Florence, 1467), as well as the large bronze ciborium of the high altar in the Cathedral of Siena (1467–72). Belonging to the master’s final period, during which he also carried out significant work as an architect and military engineer on commission from the Commune, are the panel painting of the Madonna enthroned with saints (Pinacoteca of Siena, c. 1478), the bronze bas-relief of the Resurrection of Christ (Frick Collection in New York, 1472), a wooden statue of s. Antonio (cathedral of Narni, 1473), and the bronze statue of the risen Christ (1476) on the high altar of the church of the Sienese Hospital. V. Renaissance. A temperament inclined toward analytical description and narration, he almost always lacked the capacity for a complete imaginative synthesis; yet in painting he achieved considerable results (v. Pienza, 1462), with the extremely delicate Assumption at the centre and the strongly characterized, dignified figures of ss. Pio and Calisto and of ss. Agata and Caterina in the lateral compartments, and in sculpture he affirmed uncommon qualities of anatomical expertise and realistic characterization, as in the figure of Sozzini and that of the recumbent s. Caterina. — Vedi tav. CXIX.