Madonna with child and saints

This altarpiece is one of the very few paintings tied to Andrea del Verrocchio, who ran one of the busiest workshops in Florence, the shop where the young Leonardo da Vinci learned to paint. Verrocchio took the commission in 1474 for a chapel in Pistoia, to honour the local bishop Donato de' Medici, whose name-saint Donatus stands on one side and John the Baptist on the other. But Verrocchio was really a sculptor, and much of the actual painting was done by his assistants, above all the young Lorenzo di Credi. The work went slowly, held up by late payments. The main part was finished around 1479, but the whole thing was not completed until 1486, and it still stands in the cathedral at Pistoia.