Madonna in Glory with Saints

Giovanni Tornabuoni, a Florentine banker and uncle of Lorenzo de' Medici, paid Ghirlandaio's workshop to decorate the whole main chapel of Santa Maria Novella, the great Dominican church of Florence. Once the frescoes on its walls were done, around 1490, work began on the high altar, and this panel was the centre of its front. The museum points out that the Virgin appears in two roles at once, as the woman clothed with the sun from the Book of Revelation and as a mother nursing her child. Saint Dominic, founder of the order that ran the church, stands on the left with the archangel Michael in armour. On the right is John the Baptist, patron saint of Florence and of the patron himself, since Giovanni is John, beside a saint the museum identifies as the apostle Thomas. The panel was set with seven others in a frame shaped like a triumphal arch.