Assumption of the Virgin with Four Saints

In 1520, at the wish of Lucrezia de' Medici, a daughter of Lorenzo the Magnificent, a new convent was founded at San Giorgio alla Costa, on the steep street that climbs from the Arno towards the southern walls of Florence. It was given to a community of Vallombrosan nuns, a Tuscan order of reformed Benedictines. Payments between 1520 and 1522 record this altarpiece for them.

The saints below the rising Virgin were chosen for the house. John Gualbert founded the Vallombrosan order in the 11th century, and Bernardo degli Uberti was one of its abbots before he became a cardinal and bishop of Parma. The other two are Catherine of Alexandria and a saint the museum identifies as George, the church's patron, although Vasari called him Fidelis.

Granacci did not start from nothing. He deliberately followed the Assumption that Perugino had painted in 1500 for the mother abbey of Vallombrosa, in the hills east of Florence. Both altarpieces now hang in the Galleria dell'Accademia.