Madonna and Child Enthroned with the Young Saint John, Saints Lucy, Cecilia, Agnes, Apollonia, Catherine and Elizabeth, and Allegories of the Active and Contemplative Life

In 1575 Vito Buonaccolti, head of Santa Maria Nuova, the Florentine hospital, had Allori paint this altarpiece for the chapel of its women's ward, and the subject was chosen with those women in mind. The Virgin sits in a curved stone exedra, a sign that she stands for the Church. She holds up the Christ Child, who blesses from a cushion, and reaches toward the young John the Baptist with his honeycomb, his food in the desert. On either side a woman personifies the active or the contemplative life. Below gather six women saints, Cecilia at a small organ and Agnes with her lamb among them. Placing the Virgin and these saints at the centre stressed their role as intercessors, a belief Protestants rejected and the Council of Trent had recently reaffirmed. Allori signed and dated the panel, and borrowed several figures from Andrea del Sarto, the Florentine master who had died in 1530.