(Sansepolcro 1536–1603 Florence)
Madonna and Child between the Archangel Michael and Saint Francis,
oil on canvas, 195.5 x 153 cm, unframed

This painting represents the Madonna and Child elevated upon a cloud and flanked in the foreground by the Archangel Michael, with his traditional attributes of the sword and the scales and with the dragon at his feet, while to the right Saint Francis is seen in his typical brown habit holding a cross. A hilly landscape setting is only slightly suggested in the background.

On account of its compositional simplicity and devotional intensity, this work can be placed alongside the artist’s Florentine production of the latter half of the sixteenth century, and notably in that anti-mannerist current that saw Santi di Tito as a leading exponent. The author of the present painting likely refined his training in the ambit of this master. Indeed, the present work can be associated with the early production of Jacopo da Empoli (1551–1640) who was not a direct pupil of Santi di Tito, but was influenced by his counter-reformation production, which rejected the ambiguities of late mannerist artistic culture, instead returning for inspiration to the great, naturalistic models of the early Cinquecento.

The painting under discussion here reveals both stylistic and compositional analogies with the altarpiece made by Jacopo da Empoli that is now in the church of San Michele Arcangelo in Sasseta di Vernio (near Prato, Tuscany), which also represents the Archangel Michael and Saint Francis, with the Annunciation and two donors.