Santa Maria Assunta a Staggia

Staggia, now part of Poggibonsi, grew up around a castle that Florence and Siena fought over for centuries, and both cities sent art to its parish church of Santa Maria Assunta. The finest piece came from Florence around 1460. Bindo Grazzini, a notary working in Florence who had been born in Staggia, was devoted to Mary Magdalene. He founded a chapel to her in this church and ordered its altarpiece from Antonio del Pollaiuolo, the Florentine painter and goldsmith.

The panel shows the Magdalene in the desert, lifted by four angels while a fifth brings her the communion host. Over the centuries it dropped out of sight, until the Florentine art historian Guido Carocci found it again in 1899. Six years later Bernard Berenson, the American connoisseur, published it.

It is now shown in the church's small collection of sacred art, the Museo della Pala del Pollaiolo, together with a 15th-century Adoration of the Magi by Francesco Botticini and a 14th-century Madonna and Child from the Siena area.