Virgin and Child with St John the Baptist and St Andrew

Taddeo of Siena was a pupil of a local master, Bartolo di Fredi, but he was most influenced by the leading Tuscan artists of the time, primarily the Lorenzetti brothers and Simone Martini. Though in his altarpieces he employed the traditional forms of the fourteenth century, the marked plasticity of his figures, and their vivacity, foreshadow the trends of the fifteenth century.

The central panel of the triptych portrays the Madonna dell’Umilita, a type of representation popular in the fourteenth-century Siena. Mary, seated on a brocade carpet, is about to give the breast to her Child, while hovering angels hold a crown above her head. St John the Baptist and St Andrew are depicted in the wing panels, and in the lower part seven more saints can be seen. An inscription on the picture informs us that the altar was commissioned by Signora Datuccia to commemorate the dead members of her family.

Until the beginning of the nineteenth century the triptych remained in its original place in a chapel of the church of San Francesco in Pisa.