The physical characteristics of the figures strongly support the attribution of the painting to Neri di Bicci, a Florentine artist who headed a highly productive workshop whose activity spanned the entire second half of the fifteenth century.

Born into a family of artists, Neri trained in the workshop of his father, Bicci di Lorenzo, himself the son of the renowned painter Lorenzo di Bicci. By 1452 - the year of his father’s death, when Neri inherited the workshop - he was already an accomplished and independent master. Born in 1419, it is reasonable to assume that he had begun practicing the profession at the start of the fifth decade of the Quattrocento, almost certainly through close collaboration with his father.

Despite their sometimes-archaic visual language, Neri di Bicci’s altarpieces are almost always conceived as “antique picture altarpieces”. This term indicates a departure from the Gothic polyptych format in favour of a unified panel with a simplified, streamlined silhouette - a format that became widespread from the 1430s onward and characteristic of Renaissance painting. This panel conforms to this structural model; however, its modest scale, measuring less than one meter in height, suggests that it was not intended as the centrepiece of a church altar. Rather, its dimensions make a destination for private devotional use more plausible.

The painting here examined betrays the sense of intimacy and traditional painting of Neri di Bicci. It is striking for its extremely varied and vibrant colour palette and for a composition dominated by the silent tenderness of the relationship between the figures. The protagonists are the Mother’s absorbed, slightly melancholic gaze, the respectful homage of the angels, and the Child’s timid play as he draws a corner of his Mother’s veil.

The language with which this intertwining of affections is expressed, however, is only superficially Renaissance: indeed, one detects a reminiscence of a composition by Masolino da Panicale, one of the protagonists of the last flare-up of the Gothic style in Florence. When considering dating, the painting seems to be placed quite early in the painter’s career, before his works in the fifties, such as the Madonna and Child with Four Saints, dated 1452 and now in the Museo Diocesano of San Miniato, at the time of the handover between father and son.