(Florence circa 1370/71 – after 1427)
Madonna and Child with Saint Margaret, Saint Jerome, Saint Dorothea and Saint Ambrose (?),
tempera, oil and gold on panel, shaped top, 82 x 46 cm, integral frame

The present panel is a significant example of Florentine painting from the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries, when the International Gothic was flourishing throughout Central Europe. The soft, delicate features of the figures, with their elongated fingers and necks, as well as the ornamented fabrics and folds of their garments, are typical of this style.

The symmetrical composition with the enthroned Madonna and Child, flanked on either side by saints is complemented by a vase of flowers in the centre. The vase celebrates Mary as vas divinitatis or vas gratiae, as the sublime bearer of virtue and divinity. The format and the composition, intended for private devotion, were extremely popular in Florence at that time.

The Florentine painter Lippo d’Andrea, formerly known as the Pseudo-Ambrogio di Baldese, enrolled in the Compagnia di San Luca in 1411 and in the same year worked on the fresco decoration on the façade of the Palazzo del Ceppo in Prato, alongside Niccolò di Pietro Gerini, Ambrogio di Baldese and Alvaro di Pietro. In 1434–36, following the completion of Brunelleschi’s dome, he was chosen to paint frescoes of the apostles for the tribune chapels of Santa Maria del Fiore, Florence, together with Bicci di Lorenzo, Giovanni dal Ponte and Rossello di Jacopo Franchi. Judging by the large body of work on both a monumental and intimate scale attributed to him by scholars such as Georg Pudelko, Federico Zeri and Miklós Boskovits, Lippo must have enjoyed considerable success and renown during his lifetime, testimony to the lingering taste in Florence for a more conservative style of painting.