Saint Barbara between Saints John the Baptist and Matthias

The men who paid for this altarpiece were known in Florence as the Germans, although most of them came from Flanders and Brabant. Their confraternity of Saint Barbara had begun among foreign soldiers serving the Florentine republic and later gathered weavers and craftsmen from north of the Alps who worked in the city's guilds. The Servite friars of Santissima Annunziata let them build their own oratory beside the church, finished in 1451.

The confraternity's account book records the payments for this panel from July 1468 to April 1469, some of them carried to the painter by a member named Giovanni van Peren. It never writes the painter's name. Barbara stands in the centre over the figure of her pagan father, who in her legend had her put to death. On one side is John the Baptist, patron saint of Florence. On the other is an apostle whom catalogues long called Matthew, although his painted inscription names him as Matthias, the disciple chosen to take the place of Judas.