''St. Bernardino of Siena between Two Angels'' is a painting attributed to the Italian

Renaissance The Renaissance ( , ) , from , with the same meanings. is a period in European history marking the transition from the Middle Ages to modernity and covering the 15th and 16th centuries, characterized by an effort to revive and surpass ideas ...

artist

Andrea Mantegna Andrea Mantegna (, , ; September 13, 1506) was an Italian painter, a student of Roman archeology, and son-in-law of Jacopo Bellini. Like other artists of the time, Mantegna experimented with perspective, e.g. by lowering the horizon in order ...

and his assistants, dated to 1460 and housed in the

Pinacoteca di Brera The Pinacoteca di Brera ("Brera Art Gallery") is the main public gallery for paintings in Milan, Italy. It contains one of the foremost collections of Italian paintings from the 13th to the 20th century, an outgrowth of the cultural program of ...

Milan Milan ( , , Lombard: ; it, Milano ) is a city in northern Italy, capital of Lombardy, and the second-most populous city proper in Italy after Rome. The city proper has a population of about 1.4 million, while its metropolitan city h ...

. The painting was located in the funerary chapel of marquis

Ludovico III Gonzaga Ludovico III Gonzaga of Mantua, also spelled Lodovico (also Ludovico II; 5 June 1412 – 12 June 1478) was the ruler of the Italian city of Mantua from 1444 to his death in 1478. Biography Ludovico was the son of Gianfrancesco I Gonzaga and ...

, dedicated to St. Bernardino and situated in church of San Francesco in

Mantua Mantua ( ; it, Mantova ; Lombard language, Lombard and la, Mantua) is a city and ''comune'' in Lombardy, Italy, and capital of the Province of Mantua, province of the same name. In 2016, Mantua was designated as the Italian Capital of Culture ...

. It was acquired by the Milanese gallery in 1811.

Description

The painting portrays the saint in a central position. He holds the IHS monogram (referring to the name of Jesus) on a gold plate, which he usually displayed at the end of his sermons.''The Jesus Prayer'' by Lev Gillet 1987 page 112 He stands on a platform covered with an oriental carpet. At his sides are two angels, and, above the

architrave In classical architecture, an architrave (; from it, architrave "chief beam", also called an epistyle; from Greek ἐπίστυλον ''epistylon'' "door frame") is the lintel or beam that rests on the capitals of columns. The term can ...

over his head, are four sitting or kneeling

cherubim A cherub (; plural cherubim; he, כְּרוּב ''kərūḇ'', pl. ''kərūḇīm'', likely borrowed from a derived form of akk, 𒅗𒊏𒁍 ''karabu'' "to bless" such as ''karibu'', "one who blesses", a name for the lamassu) is one of the u ...

s. The architrave carries the inscription "Huius lingua salus hominum", meaning "His word is the safety of men". The arch is decorated with festoons with flowers and fruit, a typical element of Mantegna's paintings in

Padua Padua ( ; it, Padova ; vec, Pàdova) is a city and ''comune'' in Veneto, northern Italy. Padua is on the river Bacchiglione, west of Venice. It is the capital of the province of Padua. It is also the economic and communications hub of the ...

, influenced by

Francesco Squarcione Francesco Squarcione (''c.'' 1395 – after 1468) was an Italian artist from Padua. His pupils included Andrea Mantegna (with whom he had many legal battles), Cosimo Tura and Carlo Crivelli. There are only two works signed by him: the ''Mad ...

. The basement has a

cartouche In Egyptian hieroglyphs, a cartouche is an oval with a line at one end tangent to it, indicating that the text enclosed is a royal name. The first examples of the cartouche are associated with pharaohs at the end of the Third Dynasty, but the fea ...

with the date 1460 (according to others, 1468 or 1469). It is currently disputed if the painting was executed by Mantegna and his assistants, or by the latter alone.

Notes

References

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Saint Bernardino of Siena between Two Angels 1460 paintings Paintings by Andrea Mantegna Paintings in the collection of the Pinacoteca di Brera Religious paintings Angels in art