SANO di Pietro
(b. 1406, Siena, d. 1481, Siena)

Triptych

c. 1470
Tempera on panel
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Sano di Pietro was the most prolific of all Sassetta's followers. His first securely dated work, the Gesuati Polyptych with its noble portrait of the kneeling Colombini, was painted when he was already almost forty. But over the next few decades, Sano's workshop would turn out repetitive assemblies of stereotyped saints (the Siena Pinacoteca alone counts more than forty altarpieces of this kind). Only in his delightful small predella scenes does some vestige of his earlier poetic invention surface again.

This triptych is from the late period of the artist. The centre panel, representing the Virgin and Child with praying angels, is flanked by two side wings depicting St Jerome (at left) and St Clare (at right). In the lower left corner of the centre panel the small figure of the kneeling donor can be seen.