Massacre of the Innocents, Adoration of the Magi and Flight into Egypt

Three stories from the childhood of Christ are stacked on one tall gold-ground panel, divided by bands of incised and punched decoration. The Massacre of the Innocents fills the top, King Herod's soldiers killing the boys of Bethlehem, a subject Florentine painters of the time seldom chose. Below it come the Magi with their gifts and the Holy Family's flight into Egypt, where an unexpected veiled woman walks along with Mary and Joseph. A small kneeling figure dressed in black suggests the panel was ordered as a votive offering.

It came from the church of San Giovanni Evangelista at Boldrone, just north of Florence, and scholars have passed it from name to name for a century. It was given to the school of Orcagna, then to Niccolò di Tommaso. In 1965 Luisa Marcucci grouped it with related pictures under a provisional name drawn from this very panel, the Master of the Infancy of Christ. In 1975 Miklós Boskovits gave it to Jacopo di Cione, and the museum now catalogues it as the work of his workshop.