The Virgin and Child with Two Saints

Bernardino Fungai was a Sienese painter active in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries who perpetuated the city's distinctive artistic traditions. This Virgin and Child with Two Saints in the Victoria and Albert Museum reflects the standard devotional production of Sienese workshops during a period when the city's painting was increasingly influenced by Perugino and other outside masters. The oil medium allowed for rich tonal transitions and glazed layers of color that created luminous depth impossible with the older tempera technique.

The panel demonstrates Fungai's characteristic blend of Sienese decorative tradition with the softer modeling and spatial depth he borrowed from Umbrian and Florentine painting, rendered in warm colors with careful attention to pattern.