Madonna of the people

The lay brotherhood of Arezzo first handed this commission to Giorgio Vasari, the painter and famous biographer of artists, for their chapel. When Vasari died in 1574 the work passed to Federico Barocci, who laboured over it for five years and signed it in 1579. Barocci filled the lower half with ordinary people, a blind man, a beggar, a mother with her children, acting out the works of mercy, while above them the Virgin turns to plead with Christ on their behalf. The soft, flickering colour and the tender, faintly smiling faces are Barocci's own manner, much admired and copied well into the next century. A grand duke of Tuscany bought it for the Uffizi in 1786.