Biography

Sassetta (Stefano di Giovanni), perhaps the greatest of the early 15th century Sienese painters. He mingles an innate conservatism, especially in his architectural structures, with a delight in the svelte forms of International Gothic figure design, and in the clarity and unity of Renaissance pictorial space. The essentially 14^th century basis of his style, the dreamlike blending of reality and unreality, of graceful calm and visionary fervour, are all epitomized in his dismembered masterpiece, the double-sided altarpiece of 1337-44 for S. Francesco, Borgo S. Sepolcro (part in the Louvre, Paris and National Gallery, London).