Pietro di Francesco Orioli

Pietro di Francesco degli Orioli (approx. 1458–1496) was an Italian painter of the Renaissance period.

Pietro Orioli was born in Siena in Tuscany. The art of Siena has previously been celebrated primarily for its late medieval masters such as Duccio, Simone Martini, as well as Ambrogio and Pietro Lorenzetti; Orioli arose in the next century, and the art in Siena of this period has been generally overshadowed by the art of Florentine masters of the Quattrocento.

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 (he died aged 37, and was only active independently from 1480), but his work is nonetheless important in the context of Sienese art. 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.

His first documented work is Christ Washing the Feet of the Apostles (1489), found in the Baptistry in Siena. Other important works include Madonna and Child with Saint Jerome and a Female Saint (c. 1490), a Nativity (c. 1494–96), and an Adoration of the Shepherds dating to the last part of his career.

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