The Virgin and Child with Saints Zenobius, John the Baptist, Anthony Abbot and Francis
Pesellino (c. 1422-1457) · c. 1450-1457
The Virgin sits with the Child at the centre of an almost square panel, and four saints stand around her in a single space: a bishop, probably Zenobius, the patron of Florence, John the Baptist in his camel skin, Anthony Abbot with his staff, and Francis in his brown habit showing the marks of the stigmata. The arrangement, with the saints conversing quietly around the throne rather than boxed in separate panels, is the Florentine sacra conversazione as Fra Filippo Lippi had recently reinvented it.
Pesellino, whose real name was Francesco di Stefano, was one of the most gifted Florentine painters of his generation and died in fourteen fifty seven, aged about thirty five, so the panel belongs to the last years of his short career. It came to France with the Campana collection in eighteen sixty one, catalogued as a Filippo Lippi, and entered the Louvre in eighteen sixty three as Florentine school of the second half of the fifteenth century, perhaps Andrea del Verrocchio. The attribution to Pesellino came with modern scholarship. Compare the Virgin's face with those of Lippi hanging nearby to see how closely the two painters worked.
Did You Know? The panel arrived in France as a Filippo Lippi, was recatalogued as possibly Verrocchio, and is now given to Pesellino, who died at thirty five.
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