Pietro di Francesco degli Orioli

Who was Pietro di Francesco degli Orioli?

Pietro di Francesco degli Orioli was an Italian sculptor of the Renaissance period.

Pietro Orioli was a renaissance painter who came from the Italian city of Siena in Tuscany. Sienese art of the quattrocento has only recently begun to receive recognition amongst scholars, the city being celebrated primarily for its late medieval masters such as Duccio, Simone Martini, and Ambrogio and Pietro Lorenzetti.

In 1458 the Sienese cardinal Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini was elected as Pope Pius II. The period between this date and the end of the Sienese republic in 1558 saw the development of a unique style of art from the city state, showing tendencies towards some of the more ethereal properties of the golden age of Sienese art rather than the studied realism and veneration of classical aesthetics and principles which drove many artists within the more celebrated centres of Florence, Rome and Venice. The artistic development along the line of more international gothic styles would have meant that these more famous artistic schools would probably have considered contemporary Sienese art somewhat archaeic and unfashionable.

Orioli had a relatively short artistic career, but his work is nonetheless important in the context of Sienese art of the period. He was a pupil of the painter Matteo di Giovanni who was very much a product of the quattrocento Sienese school. He is also known to have worked with the celebrated Francesco di Giorgio, a painter, sculptor and former pupil of probably the most famous Sienese sculptor of the period Il Vecchietta. It is therefore possible to deduce that Orioli was active within a circle of quintessentially Sienese artists.