78 THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY. Chap. III. nimbuses. An agreable tenderness in the delineation of females sometimes redeems the more vulgar errors into which Sano commonly falls; and he fairly succeeds in such religious subjects as a Paradise, or a Coronation of the Virgin, and gives some greater charm to the form of an angel than to that of an attendant saint. It has been usual to call him the Angelico of Sienna, and this may be true, if the name be meant only to suggest a contrast between his productions and the coarser ones of some of his cotemporaries. An early Virgin and saints, ordered for the convent of S. Girolamo of Sienna in 1444, shows him to have been active at that time in the production of the partitioned altarpieces characteristic of the taste of his countrymen. 1 A fresco of the Coronation in the groundfloor of the Palazzo Pubblico is of the following year; and the most important of all Sano’s labours. 2 Some grace in the movement of the bowing Virgin is allied to a feeling immediately akin to that of Sassetta. Finer and better preserved, however, is the Madonna, SS. Jerom and Bernardino in a chapel to the left of the portal of the convent-church dell’ Osservanza. 3 Another careful work is a S. Bernardino in the sacristy of the Duomo at Sienna. The most successful of the pieces in the Academy is the Ascension of the Virgin of 1479; 4 and there are many interesting specimens of his * No. 157. 158.159. Sienna Aca demy, inscribed: “Opns SaniPetri de Senis MCCCCXLIIII.” • 2 A long inscription at the base of this fresco exists and is given with tolerable correctness by Della Valle (Lett. San. II. note to p. 230). It concludes: “Opus Sani Petri Senis M°CCCCXLV.” The two principal figures are in front of a vast throne at the back of which are numerous angels. Seraphs, pro phets, and saints attend at the sides. Cherubs and other inmates of paradise play in the spandrils of the arch forming the recess; and the whole scene is guarded, as it were, by a large S. Catherine (repainted in the seventeenth cen tury) and S. Bernardino. 3 The Virgin and angel annun ciate are in the medallions of the spandrils. The predella is remo ved and now stands as base to a picture of 1413 in the same church, which may be assigned to Taddeo Bartoli (See antea II. note 2 to p. 170). Some other pieces by Sano are in the Sacristy of the church. 4 Nos. 148. 149. Academy;—in scribed : “Sani Petri pinxit — ques- ta tavola a fata fare suoro Batista di Benedetto de’ nobili da Litiano MCCCCLXXVIIII.” This altar- piece was in the church of S. Pe- tronilla. The remaining panels