(Florence, circa 1368–1452)
Portable triptych,
central panel: The Madonna and Child enthroned between Saints James and Peter Martyr;
left wing: Angel of the Annunciation, Saint Julian and Saint Anthony Abbot;
right wing: Virgin Annunciate, Saint Leonard and Saint Francis;
on the external side of each wing: a fictive marble decoration with a fictive mosaic rhombus encompassed within a quadrilobe,
tempera on panel, gold ground, shaped top, 52 x 47 cm (overall), 20 x 35 cm (central panel without engaged frame), 12 x 40 cm (left wing), 11.5 x 41 cm (right wing)

Provenance:
Alfred Francois Ramé (1826-1886) collection, Rennes;
Private collection, Normandy;
Private collection, Switzerland

The present painting would have been commissioned by private clients and the unusual choice of saints indicates that it was a devotional object made to specific requirements. In the right-hand wing a pentimento is visible in the gold ground, revealing how in place of the two saints, there was originally a Crucifixion.

This triptych is a typical work of Bicci di Lorenzo and it belongs to the early phase of his long and productive career. The compact forms of the style demonstrate a direct descent from the late Trecento Florentine tradition of Agnolo Gaddi and Mariotto di Nardo, they also reveal the continuing vitality of the inheritance of Orcagna’s pervading example. This, combined with a softness in the modelling, a linear fluidity and attention to detail, are fully expressive of late Gothic taste.

Similarities of style and painterly technique are especially evident in comparison to the large triptych of the Annunciation and Saints dated 1414 formerly in San Lorenzo a Porciano (Casentino) and now conserved in the Propositura di Santa Maria Assunta at Stia (B. Berenson, Italian Pictures of the Renaissance. Florentine School, London 1963, vol. I, p. 31, pl. 498), which is the first securely dated work by the artist. Furthermore, the central panel of this portable altarpiece bears the same composition as the principal section of the triptych in Sant’Ambrogio, Florence, which possibly dates to an earlier moment in the activity of Bicci di Lorenzo (R. Van Marle, The Development of the Italian Schools of Painting, vol. IX, The Hague 1927, p. 8, fig. 4).

The dress of Saint Julian on the left panel is exquisitely secular and courtly, while both his and his saintly companion’s features reveal a markedly realistic accent. This shows how the artist elaborated independently on the great examples of Lorenzo Monaco, and perhaps also of Gherardo Starnina, to achieve an especially successful result.