The Coronation of the Virgin

This painter executed important church commissions in Florence, Prato and Pisa. The Coronation of the Virgin is conventionally presented in a stylized and formal manner. In this painting, however, the subject is invested with greater naturalism. The artist appeals to the viewer’s delight in the physical world through the rich patterning of the draperies and the foreground field in which the saints stand and the angel musicians kneel. The size of the panel suggests it was created for a private chapel or as a small guild altarpiece. Christ and Mary sit on a bench-like double throne beneath a baldachin of sumptuous fabric. Before them is a vase of flowers. The faces of the attendant angels and saints are individualized.