The Trinity

The confraternity of priests who ordered this altarpiece belonged to the church of the Holy Trinity in Pistoia, so the Trinity fills its centre. God the Father floats in the air among red and blue angels and holds up the Cross with the dead Christ hanging on it, while the dove of the Holy Ghost hovers between them. The type is known as the Throne of Grace.

The priests commissioned it in 1455 from the Florentine painter Francesco Pesellino, and at the end of July 1457 he died with the panel unfinished. Two painters, Fra Filippo Lippi and Domenico Veneziano, were asked to judge how far he had got, and they reported that it was half done. His widow told the Mercanzia, the merchants' court of Florence, that it was almost finished, since the money owed to his heirs depended on the answer. In 1458 the job went to Lippi, whose workshop completed it. This central area is where the two campaigns meet. The head and feet of God the Father are in Pesellino's manner, while the body of Christ is thinly painted and the dove seems to have been added late, over the Cross.

The altarpiece was sawn apart in the late 18th century, and the joins where the Gallery fitted the pieces back together can still be seen. This central panel was bought in 1863.