Der hl. Bernardin von Siena mit zwei Engeln

Girolamo del Pacchia was a Sienese painter active around 1477–1535, associated with the generation of Sienese painters who assimilated the influence of Raphael and the Florentine High Renaissance while retaining elements of the local tradition. The Der hl. Bernardin von Siena mit zwei Engeln (Saint Bernardino of Siena with Two Angels), dated 1505 and now in the Bavarian State Painting Collections, depicts the fifteenth-century Franciscan preacher who was Siena's most celebrated modern saint, famous for his fiery sermons, his promotion of the devotion to the Holy Name of Jesus (IHS), and his reform of Franciscan observance. Bernardino was canonized in 1450 — within six years of his death — and his cult was immediately propagated through Sienese painting as an expression of civic pride. Del Pacchia's version reflects the Sienese High Renaissance approach to saint imagery with characteristic elegance and refinement.

Del Pacchia employs the Sienese High Renaissance palette of warm, harmonious color with soft figure modeling influenced by Raphael and Perugino. Bernardino is depicted with his standard attributes — the IHS sunburst monogram he held aloft in his preaching — flanked by angels whose graceful poses reflect the Raphaelesque figure ideals that were reshaping Sienese painting in the first decades of the sixteenth century.