Magrini-Altar

A Lucca man named Francesco Magrini died in 1479 and left money in his will for an altar in the church of San Michele. The panel eventually painted for it is this one, by Filippino Lippi, still young and just out of Botticelli's workshop. He set four saints together in the open air under a bright sky, an unusually loose, almost casual arrangement for an altarpiece then. There is Sebastian pierced with arrows, Roch showing the plague sore on his leg, Jerome, and Helena holding the cross she was said to have found. Look at Helena's face and drapery and you can still feel Botticelli close by. She could almost have stepped out of his Primavera.