(b. 1477, Siena, d. after 1533, Siena)

The Birth of the Virgin 1518 Fresco, 295 x 317 cm Oratory of San Bernardino, Siena

In 1518 a new project brought together three Sienese painters, Sodoma, Beccafumi and Girolamo del Pacchia. The new project was a scheme of fresco paintings to embellish the interior of a meeting room belonging to one of the city's oldest confraternities - the Confraternity of Santa Maria degli Angeli della Veste Nera (Saint Mary of the Angels and of the Black Robes). Founded in honour of the Virgin after 1450 the confraternity also adopted Bernardino as one of their saints, adding his name to the confraternity's title. For this reason the room that painters decorated is now known as the Oratory of San Bernardino. Designed as a place where the members of the confraternity would meet to conduct both their collective devotions and their administrative business, the Oratory of San Bernardino offers a rare example of an early sixteenth-century decorative ensemble that has survived in almost its original form.

On the side walls of the room there is a series of large-scale fresco paintings separated from one another by pilasters decorated with candelabra motifs. The paintings consist of narrative scenes from the life of the Virgin. Girolamo del Pacchia, who was a member of the confraternity, had been assigned the paintings of the Birth of the Virgin and the Annunciation.

Girolamo del Pacchia provided his patrons with paintings whose style reflects that of earlier altarpieces commissioned from him by patrons in and around Siena. Their stylistic idiom also demonstrates an appreciation of Sodoma's earlier Sienese work, as well as that of other contemporary painters based in Florence and Rome. In the Birth of the Virgin Girolamo appears to have studied Andrea del Sarto's painting of this subject in the forecourt of the church of the Santissima Annunziata in Florence, adopting the generously proportioned figures and ample draperies of the women visitors in this fresco completed some four years earlier.

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Author: GIROLAMO del Pacchia Title: The Birth of the Virgin Time-line: 1501-1550 School: Italian Form: painting