Girolamo Di Benvenuto Biography
Girolamo di Benvenuto was born in Siena around 1470. His father ran a renowned shop in the Sienese tradition of the fifteenth century.
Girolamo trained in this paternal workshop, in a period of great artistic revolutions in the city, which began in 1487, with the rise to power of Pandolfo Petrucci, the Magnificent. In the early years of the sixteenth century, artists such as Signorelli and Pinturicchio arrived in Siena, who influenced Girolamo's pictorial language. The first panel signed and dated by the artist dates back to 1508.
Around the middle of the first decade of the sixteenth century, it is believed that he created the altarpiece for the church of San Agostino in Acquapendente, restored in those years and now preserved at the Fogg Art Museum in Cambridge, Massachusetts. This altarpiece consists of a central compartment on canvas which depicts the Madonna and Child and saints Augustine, Nicholas of Tolentino, Monica and John the Evangelist.
In 1508, Girolamo signed the altarpiece with the Madonna and saints Domenico, Catherine of Alexandria, Jerome and Catherine of Siena, also known as Madonna delle Nevi, intended for the altar of the chapel sponsored by the Sozzini family in the Sienese church of San Domenico and today preserved in the National Art Gallery.
After his father's death, which occurred around 1518, Girolamo inherited the workshop and continued to work with the same passion and productivity until his death in 1524.
