The Sermon of Saint Bernardino of Siena

Saint Bernardino of Siena, a Franciscan friar who died in 1444, was one of the most celebrated preachers of 15th-century Italy, and in Siena his memory was kept by a lay confraternity with its own oratory beside the church of San Francesco. In 1537 Beccafumi finished an altarpiece of the Virgin and Child with saints for that oratory. This small panel, 51 centimetres wide, comes from its predella, the strip of scenes along the base.

Beccafumi shows the saint high in a wooden pulpit, his listeners gathered on benches below. The two other predella panels, Saint Anthony and the miracle of the mule, and Saint Francis receiving the stigmata, are also in the Louvre. All three were still in place in Siena in 1835. The museum bought them in 1966 from the London dealer Julius Weitzner.