Virgin and Child
by CECCO DI PIETRO, Tempera on wood, 124 x 53 cm
The panel originates from the Hospital Church of SS. Giovanni e Niccolò, Florence. (The church and the attached hospital seem to have gone under several different names.)
The two donors at the bottom of the panel are identified as Bartolomeo and Bindo Benini, two brothers who were linked together in their patronage. They were generous benefactors of the Camaldolese monastery of Santa Maria degli Angeli, Florence and they commissioned an altarpiece for the high altar of the church of SS. Giovanni e Niccolò from Nardo di Cione, and an other altarpiece with the present Virgin and Child in the centre from the Pisan painter Cecco di Pietro. The central panel was flanked by standing saints, now in the Mus�e du Petit Palais, Avignon.