The Funeral of St. Francis

Benedetto uses not the schiacciato but deeply carved relief with stereometric effects of perspective to obtain a quietly naturalistic kind of representation. In connection with this relief Pope-Hennessy recalled the narrative painting of Ghirlandaio, who had worked with Benedetto in San Gimignano on the Chapel of S. Fina. The rarefied world of the abstract and nostalgic culture of Mino and Agostino, always subtly aristocratic, gives way to the harmonious measure of an amiable everyday chronicle.