# Feeding of the Poor [View the canonical artwork record]() ## Artwork - Artist: [DOMENICO DI BARTOLO]() - Date: 1401-1450 - Technique: Fresco, height c. 450 cm ## Commentary Feeding of the Poor 1444 Fresco, height c. 450 cm Pellegrinaio, Spedale di Santa Maria della Scala, Siena This fresco is located in the 2nd bay on the west wall of the Pellegrinaio in the Spedale di Santa Maria della Scala. The Pellegrinaio, situated on the ground floor of the hospital, is a fourteenth-century room which took the form of a long vaulted hall. In the four scenes on the west wall, painted by Domenico di Bartolo, we find large numbers of figures gathered in a stagelike foreground and engaged in the various good works assigned to the hospital by statute in 1305. The settings for these depictions of everyday work of the hospital may reproduce actual spaces within the complex. For all their realism, the scenes are highly idealised. This scene records some of the hospital's main activities, which are clearly set out in the surviving fourteenth-century statutes. ## Related artworks - [Birth of the Baptist]() - [Caring for the Sick \(detail\)]() - [Caring for the Sick \(detail\)]() - [Caring for the Sick \(detail\)]() - [Caring for the Sick]() - [Enlargement of the Hospital \(detail\)]() - [Enlargement of the Hospital]() - [Extension of the Privileges by Celestine III \(detail\)]() - [Extension of the Privileges by Celestine III]() - [Feeding of the Poor \(detail\)]() - [Madonna of Humility]() - [Rearing and Marrying of Female Foundlings]() ## Attribution [Web Gallery of Art]()