Master of the Osservanza

Master of the Osservanza Altarpiece

Sienese, active late 1420s - early 1440s

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Italian painter and illuminator

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Sixteen men and boys stand around a man lying on a bed, Saint Anthony, in this square painting. A seventeenth mourner kneels on our side of the bed and faces Saint Anthony. Some of the onlookers have their hair cut into rings around their heads, and others’ heads are covered by hoods. They all have pale skin tinged with green, and they wear robes in shades of black, smoky purple, brown, or cream white. A man at the foot of the bed wears a sky-blue robe edged with golden orange down the front as he reads from an open book. Two boys to the left wear white and black and hold tall candles, and a third man, wearing black, holds a cross on a high staff. Others hold candlesticks, walking sticks, books, or stand with hands clasped. Saint Anthony has a long white beard and wears a black hood and muted pink and black robe. One hand rests by his side, and the other rests on his chest. His eyes are closed, and his head is surrounded by a gold and red halo. The bed is draped with a vivid crimson-red cloth. The walls of the room are parchment white striped with mauve pink and black on the upper half. Arched windows and doorways open onto rooms and a courtyard with trees beyond this space. The floor is rose pink.
Master of the Osservanza, Sano di Pietro, The Death of Saint Anthony, c. 1430/1435, tempera on poplar panel, Samuel H. Kress Collection, 1952.5.73

The Death of Saint Anthony

Master of the Osservanza, Sano di Pietro · c. 1430/1435 · tempera on poplar panel ·  Accession ID  1952.5.73

Three pale-skinned men wearing long, dark robes stand in and near a dense cluster of vivid, mint-green buildings with arched openings and clay-red colored roofs that nearly fill this vertical painting. Near the lower center of the composition, two bearded men stand in an open doorway looking out at the younger, cleanshaven man who stands barefoot to our right, facing them. At the door, the man in front has a long, white beard, and he holds a red book, or manuscript, in his left hand while holding up his right hand with his first two fingers raised. The man behind him has a red beard and hair. The younger man to our right bows his head, encircled with a gold halo, toward the pair in the doorway. The younger man holds one hand over his heart, and in the other holds a long, gnarled walking stick. The skin of all three men has a greenish cast. The green buildings are tall and narrow. Beyond the buildings, near the top of the panel, a row of tall, dark green trees are silhouetted against the shiny gold sky. The gold background is punched with a decorative band of small circles and arches along the top edge of the panel.
Master of the Osservanza, Sano di Pietro, Saint Anthony Leaving His Monastery, c. 1430/1435, tempera on poplar panel, Samuel H. Kress Collection, 1952.5.21

Saint Anthony Leaving His Monastery

Master of the Osservanza, Sano di Pietro · c. 1430/1435 · tempera on poplar panel ·  Accession ID  1952.5.21

Three scenes showing the same person, Saint Anthony, are spaced along a path that winds from the lower right corner and around hills and trees into the distance in this vertical painting. In all three scenes, Saint Anthony has pale skin, a long white beard, and a halo framing a fringe of white hair around a balding head. He is barefoot and wears a black monk’s robe, and wears or carries a coral-pink cloak. Closest to us, in front of the mouth of a dark cave, Saint Anthony embraces a light-skinned, bearded man with long, curly blond hair. That man wears cream-white robes and also has a halo. Two walking sticks lie on the ground at their feet. The pebble-lined path disappears between stylized trees painted with smooth dark brown trunks and canopies created with pine and spring-green dots over a ground of forest green. To our right and farther along the path as it rises along the ridge of a hill, Saint Anthony meets a centaur, which has the torso and head of a man and the body and legs of a horse. The centaur holds a palm frond, and Saint Anthony raises one hand. On the opposite side of the hill, in the distance to our left, Saint Anthony walks along the path with a walking stick, and his pink robe hangs over a second long stick slung over his shoulder. Trees running along the background come nearly to the top of the panel, but a sliver of sky is painted gold, and the top edge is punched or embossed with a decorative pattern. Pale red shapes beyond the trees could be a building, perhaps a church, rising in the distance.
Master of the Osservanza, Sano di Pietro, The Meeting of Saint Anthony and Saint Paul, c. 1430/1435, tempera on poplar panel, Samuel H. Kress Collection, 1939.1.293

The Meeting of Saint Anthony and Saint Paul

Master of the Osservanza, Sano di Pietro · c. 1430/1435 · tempera on poplar panel ·  Accession ID  1939.1.293

Enclosed within the pale, peach-colored walls of a courtyard, two women with two children and three men line up before a man with a gold halo standing in the lower right corner in this vertical painting. All the people have pale or olive-toned skin except for one man, to our left, who has a light brown complexion. The cleanshaven man to our right, Saint Anthony, has light skin, short blond hair, and he wears a gold-trimmed, burgundy-red cloak and pale green hose. His disk-like gold halo has a band of rings near its perimeter. In his left hand, closer to us, he holds a white cloth purse by its strings, as he offers coins with his right right hand. The boy receiving the coins in a shallow bowl has blond hair and is dressed in a spring-green cloak, with yellow hose and black shoes. He stands next to a woman wearing a patched, caramel-brown dress and a cream-white veil over her head, neck, and shoulders. She holds a blond infant wearing sky blue. Another woman, stooped with age, hair also veiled, stands with them. This group of four all have pale skin. Behind this group and to our left is a man with an olive complexion and a black beard and hair. He wears a fraying black robe. His chemise pokes through a hole in his right sleeve and he leans forward on bare feet. He holds an ivory-white object, perhaps a cloth or bread, by his mouth with the hand farther from us. Behind him a taller, older man, with white hair and beard walks to our left with his eyes closed, steadied by a staff and led by a small black and white dog on a rope. He wears a green cap, topped with black fur, and a pale blue cape over a brown robe. A bearded man with light brown skin enters the scene from our left, walking staff in hand. He wears a turban-like cap, a brown robe, and black shoes. Through an open, arched doorway to our right, beyond Saint Anthony, a second image of the saint is shown descending a staircase with purse in hand. Also with a gold halo, he approaches another arched opening with a stout wooden door, through which piles of gold coins are heaped. The arcade of the second level of the courtyard fills the top quarter of the painting and extends off the top edge. A shield-shaped coat of arms is shown over the doorway closest to us to our right, with three stars across a gray band against a golden yellow background.
Master of the Osservanza, Sano di Pietro, Saint Anthony Distributing His Wealth to the Poor, c. 1430/1435, tempera on poplar panel, Samuel H. Kress Collection, 1952.5.20

Saint Anthony Distributing His Wealth to the Poor

Master of the Osservanza, Sano di Pietro · c. 1430/1435 · tempera on poplar panel ·  Accession ID  1952.5.20

Bibliography

1948

  • Graziani, Alberto. "Il Maestro dell'Osservanza." Proporzioni 2 (1948): 75-88.

1956

  • Pope-Hennessy, John. "Rethinking Sassetta." The Burlington Magazine 98 (October 1956): 364-370.

1957

  • Carli, Enzo. Il Sassetta e il Maestro dell'Osservanza. Milan, 1957.

1985

  • Alessi, Cecilia, and Pietro Scapecchi. "Il Maestro dell'Osservanza: Sano di Pietro o Francesco di Bartolomeo?" Prospettiva 42 (1985): 13-37.

1988

  • Christiansen, Keith. "Master of the Osservanza." In Painting in Renaissance Siena 1420-1500. Ed. Keith Christiansen, Laurence B. Kanter, and Carl Brandon Strehlke. Exh. cat. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1988: 104-123.

1997

  • Chelazzi Dini, Giuletta, Alessandro Angelini, and Bernardina Sani. Pittura senese. Milan, 1997: 228-235.

2003

  • Boskovits, Miklós, and David Alan Brown, et al. Italian Paintings of the Fifteenth Century. The Systematic Catalogue of the National Gallery of Art. Washington, D.C., 2003: 479-480.