Virgin and Child Surrounded by Angels and Female Saints, with God the Father Blessing

In 1909 the catalogue of the Paris collector Victor Martin Le Roy listed this panel as the work of Giovanni di Paolo, one of the best-known Sienese painters of the 15th century. The name did not hold. The painting passed through the Wildenstein gallery to the collectors Léon Salavin and Jeanne Fournier, and when it came to the Louvre in 1973 as a deposit of the Fondation de France, the inventory gave it, with a note of doubt, to Pietro di Giovanni d'Ambrogio, another Sienese painter of that generation. The Louvre now lists him without the qualifier.

The panel is 57 by 43 centimetres. The Virgin sits with the Child among angels and female saints, and God the Father blesses from above. Lettering in gold, now badly worn, runs along her halo and across the carpet at her feet. In 2010 it was lent to Siena for an exhibition on the city's arts in the early Renaissance.