The Holy Family with Saint Catherine of Alexandria

A round painting almost a metre across was a household object in Florence, hung in the main room of a good house. This one measures 89 centimetres in diameter. The Child is asleep on a cushion laid over a parapet, Joseph stands behind, and the woman at the left holding a pen and a book is Catherine of Alexandria. The museum's own record names her, where older catalogues said only that a saint was present.

When Signorelli painted it is still argued over. Tom Henry narrowed the date to 1491 and 1492, on the evidence of the pictures Signorelli was making at Volterra under Medici patronage in exactly those months, the last of Lorenzo de' Medici's life. Earlier scholars spread it anywhere across the early 1490s, and Roberta Olson gave the tondo to the workshop instead of the master. The state catalogue still files it under his name, and the number on the frame reads Palatina 355.