Saint Bernardin of Siena

Guidoccio Cozzarelli's Saint Bernardino of Siena, painted around 1485 and now in the Städel Museum, depicts the great Franciscan preacher and religious reformer canonized in 1450 — barely five years after his death — a testament to his extraordinary impact on Italian popular religion. Bernardino traveled constantly across the peninsula preaching repentance and reform, and propagated the cult of the Holy Name of Jesus through the distinctive IHS monogram. Cozzarelli was a Sienese painter and sculptor who trained under Francesco di Giorgio Martini, and his images of local saints reflect Siena's fierce pride in its own spiritual heritage. Representations of Bernardino proliferated rapidly after canonization, and the saint's thin, ascetic face — recorded by contemporaries — became one of the most recognizable physiognomies in Italian religious art of the period.

Cozzarelli renders the saint in the standard devotional pose, holding the IHS monogram with the spare, upright dignity of a man defined by ascetic discipline. The Sienese tradition of elegant linearity and refined color is evident in the careful drapery and the saint's idealized yet sharply individual face, rendered in clear Mediterranean light.