Trinity Triptych (Throne of Grace)

In his will of 1363 a Florentine named Giovanni di Geri Ghiberti left money for a chapel in the chapter house of Santa Maria degli Angeli, a monastery of Camaldolese monks where his brother Michele lived. By 1365 the chapel was built and this triptych stood on its altar, with the date painted along the bottom of the frame.

The saints tell you whose house it was. On the left stands Romuald, the hermit who founded the Camaldolese order, and his stories run along the predella below, his vision of Saint Apollinaris, a rebuke from the hermit Marinus, demons tormenting him and a dream. On the right is John the Evangelist, to whom the chapel was dedicated. The centre holds the image called the Throne of Grace. God the Father appears behind the crucified Christ and blesses, and the dove of the Holy Spirit hovers between them, so the whole Trinity reads in one vertical line.

In the 19th century the panel was credited to Giotto and later to Lorenzo Monaco. Recent scholars agree on Nardo di Cione, who died within a year or so of its completion. It came to the Accademia after the Napoleonic suppression of the monasteries in 1810.