Madonna Enthroned with Child and Six Angels (Maestà)

Two Florentine painters, born about a hundred years apart, share this one panel. Around 1320 the Master of Saint Cecilia painted the Virgin enthroned with the Christ Child and six angels gathered close around the throne, in the solid, weighty manner he had taken from Giotto. The panel first stood in the convent of Santa Maria Maddalena at Le Caldine, in the hills outside Florence. About a century later its arched top was squared off, and the new upper corners were filled with an Annunciation, Gabriel on one side and Mary on the other, painted by Bicci di Lorenzo, a Florentine active in the 1400s. He worked on the same wood the older master had used, so the enthroned Virgin and the angel added above her stand a full century apart in date.