After Ambrogio Lorenzetti, Massa Marittima dedicates an exhibition to Sassetta. With news

From March 14 to July 14, 2024, the Museum of San Pietro all’Orto in Massa Marittima will host the exhibition Sassetta and His Time. A Look at Sienese Art of the Early Fifteenth Century, curated by Alessandro Bagnoli, promoted by the Municipality of Massa Marittima, in collaboration with the Archdiocese of Siena-Colle Val d’Elsa-Montalcino, the Department of Cultural Heritage of the University of Siena, the Diocese of Massa Marittima-Piombino, the National Picture Gallery of Siena, and the Soprintendenza Archeologica, Belle Arti e Paesaggio for the Provinces of Siena, Grosseto and Arezzo.

After the exhibition dedicated to Ambrogio Lorenzetti in 2018, the protagonist of a new exhibition at the Museo di San Pietro all’Orto will be Stefano di Giovanni, better known as Sassetta (active in Siena from 1423 to 1450). The exhibition takes its cue from a work on display in the museum’s permanent collection, namely Sassetta’sArchangel Gabriel, a small panel once placed between the cusps of an altarpiece, to present visitors with about fifty works, including twenty-six by the Sienese master, and others by artists active in the same context in those years, including the Maestro dell’Osservanza, Sano di Pietro, Giovanni di Paolo, Pietro Giovanni Ambrosi and Domenico di Niccolò dei Cori. The Virgin Annunciate, part of the same altarpiece of the Archangel Gabriel, could not return, albeit temporarily, as it is now the property of the Yale University Art Gallery in New Haven.

The exhibition also features a previously unpublished Sassetta that the exhibition curator rediscovered under a heavy seventeenth-century repainting and which was restored by Barbara Schleicher: it is a Madonna and Child owned by the Archdiocese of Siena and from the parish church of San Giovanni Battista in Molli (Sovicille). Bagnoli assumes that the work comes from the Sienese church of San Francesco and tends to identify it with the one signed by Sassetta remembered in the Petroni chapel by Fabio Chigi in 1620.

Next will be the Madonna and Child from the Museo dell’Opera di Siena recently restored by FAI, joined by the Madonna of the Cherries from the Grosseto Museum. From the Pinacoteca Nazionale di Siena comes to the exhibition the Four Protectors of Siena, the Four Doctors of the Church, the panel of St. Anthony clubbed by devils, and theLast Supper, all fragments of the famous altarpiece commissioned from Sassetta by the Arte della lana, for which a new reconstruction is proposed in the exhibition. Then from the Monte dei Paschi Bank Collection comes a Saint Anthony Abbot; from the Chigi Saracini Collection come a Sorrowful Madonna and Saint John, a Saint Martin and the Pauper, and theAdoration of the Magi. From the Museo Diocesano in Cortona comes a large polyptych. Other works by the artist come from the Pinacoteca Nazionale di Siena, the Museo dell’Opera di Siena and the aforementioned Chigi Saracini Collection.

The exhibition brings together the fruit of Alessandro Bagnoli’s years of work in the area. Two new profiles of artists of Sassetta culture are presented on this occasion for the first time: Nastagio di Guasparre, hitherto known as the Master of Sant’Ansano, and the Master of Monticiano. Also on display will be works that have never been exhibited to the public, such as a Saint Ansano, drawn in the codex of the chapters of the Company of the same name, a Flagellation painted on the cover of a volume of the Ufficio della Gabella of the Municipality of Siena, which was recently reacquired to the public patrimony and lent by way of exception for the Massa Marittima exhibition by the State Archives of Siena. Finally, a small sculpture depicting the Stigmata of St. Francis, which can be recognized as an element of a wooden choir carved by Domenico di Niccolò dei Cori.

Image: Sassetta, Madonna and Child and Two Angels; St. Nicholas of Bari and St. Michael the Archangel; St. John the Baptist and St. Margaret (Cortona, Diocesan Museum)

After Ambrogio Lorenzetti, Massa Marittima dedicates an exhibition to Sassetta. With news

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