Dispute of the Fathers of the Church on the Immaculate Conception

Stretched out on the ground at the foot of this altarpiece lies the dead body of Adam, through whom original sin entered the world. Six saints stand over him debating whether Mary was conceived free of that sin, while she is carried up into heaven before God the Father. They are John the Evangelist, Jerome, Ambrose, Augustine, Anselm of Canterbury and Bernard of Clairvaux. Bernard, the monk in white with the open book, had written around 1140 against the new feast of Mary's Conception kept by the canons of Lyon. Giovanni Serristori ordered the panel for his family altar in San Salvatore al Monte, a Franciscan church above Florence, and died between 1531 and 1533 with it unfinished. Giovanni Antonio Sogliani went on working at it slowly and delivered it to Serristori's son-in-law and heir, Alamanno Salviati, who gave it to the Augustinian nuns of San Luca. That church was demolished in the 18th century.