Saint Anthony Polyptych

In 1468 the city of Perugia voted public money towards an altarpiece for a small community of Franciscan tertiaries at the Porta Sant'Angelo. Their prioress was Ilaria Baglioni, daughter of Braccio Baglioni, the man who effectively ran Perugia, which is probably why a modest convent could engage a painter of Piero della Francesca's standing. What he delivered looks backward and forward at once. The main tier is an old-fashioned gold-ground arrangement, the Madonna enthroned with Anthony of Padua, John the Baptist, Francis and Elizabeth of Hungary standing in separate compartments. Above it he set an Annunciation inside a receding colonnade, worked out around a single vanishing point, of a kind he would later explain in his treatise on perspective. In 1572 the community was enclosed. The nuns had one of the small upper panels taken out and an iron grille fitted in the gap, so they could follow the mass from their choir without being seen.