Madonna and Child with Saints
c. 1454
Tempera on wood, 176 x 166 cm
Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence

by Alessio Baldovinetti (b. ca.1425, Firenze, d. 1499, Firenze)

This altarpiece was commissioned to Baldovinetti for the Medici villa of Cafaggiolo. Represented in the painting are, from left to right, Saint Anthony Abbot, Saint Julian, Saint Lawrence, Saint John the Baptist, and Saints Cosmas and Damian. Saint Peter the Martyr (right) and Saint Francis (left) are the kneeling figures.

Alessio Baldovinetti, like many other artists of his time, emerged from Beato Angelico's circle. Only apparently open to the innovations of Paolo Uccello and Domenico Veneziano, Baldovinetti actually grasped only some superficial hint of them, as for example in the vivid luminosity of his spaces, the atmospheric transparence discernible in the hyperbolic distances of his landscapes.