1849. THE NATIVITY.
Jacopo Pacchiarotto (Sienese: 1474-1540).
The story of this painter and revolutionist—who, joining the Bardotti and taking part in popular risings in Siena, was concealed by the monks in a tomb, beside a newly-buried corpse—is familiar from Browning's humorous telling of it in his Pacchiarotto and how he worked in Distemper. He was originally a pupil of Bernardino Fungai (see 1331); but his later work shows the influence of Fra Bartolommeo and Raphael.
"He appears to have studied Raphael," says Lanzi, "with the greatest care; and there are heads and whole figures so lively, and with such grace in the features, that to some connoisseurs they seem to possess the ideal." Certainly there is a liveliness and an appropriateness of expression about the figures in this picture which distinguish it from the stiff mannerism of earlier Sienese pictures. Kneeling in adoration are St. John the Baptist and St. Jerome (with the stone, in his character as penitent). St. Stephen, behind St. John, carries on his head the stone, as symbol of his martyrdom. Behind St. Jerome is St. Nicholas of Bari, a finely rendered portrait of venerable age. Of the figures in the niche-shaped panels in the frame, that, at the top on the left, of the Angel of the Annunciation is particularly graceful. The panels of the predella show the Agony in the Garden, the Betrayal, the Crucifixion, the Deposition, and the Resurrection.