_Jacopo Pacchiarotto_ (Sienese: 1474-1540).
The story of this painter and revolutionist--who, joining
the Bardotti and taking part in popular risings in Siena,
was concealed by the monks in a tomb, beside a newly-buried
corpse--is familiar from Browning's humorous telling of it
in his _Pacchiarotto and how he worked in Distemper_. He was
originally a pupil of Bernardino Fungai (see 1331); but his
later work shows the influence of Fra Bartolommeo and Raphael.
"He appears to have studied Raphael," says Lanzi, "with the greatest
care; and there are heads and whole figures so lively, and with such
grace in the features, that to some connoisseurs they seem to possess
the ideal." Certainly there is a liveliness and an appropriateness
of expression about the figures in this picture which distinguish it
from the stiff mannerism of earlier Sienese pictures. Kneeling in
adoration are St. John the Baptist and St. Jerome (with the stone, in
his character as penitent). St. Stephen, behind St. John, carries on
his head the stone, as symbol of his martyrdom. Behind St. Jerome is
St. Nicholas of Bari, a finely rendered portrait of venerable age. Of
the figures in the niche-shaped panels in the frame, that, at the top
on the left, of the Angel of the Annunciation is particularly graceful.
The panels of the predella show the Agony in the Garden, the Betrayal,
the Crucifixion, the Deposition, and the Resurrection.