ANDREA DEL SARTO
(b. 1486, Firenze, d. 1530, Firenze)

Virgin and Child in Glory with Six Saints

c. 1528
Oil on wood, 209 x 176 cn
Galleria Palatina (Palazzo Pitti), Florence

Vasari mentions this panel as having been painted for Becuccio, a glassmaker, from Gambassi, and adds that it had a predella with the lively portraits of Becuccio and his wife. (The two little tondi with the portraits are now in Chicago.) The represented saints are Lawrence, Onophrius, John the Baptist, Mary Magdalen, Sebastian and Roch. he panel was placed to an altar dedicated to the hermit saints Lawrence and Onophrius in the female monastery of the Eremite Benedictines, the Pieve di Sta Maria a Chianni a Gambassi.

The design is symmetrical, forming a three-dimensional pyramid with the saints circled round the raised divine centre, with those in front kneeling down to admit the viewer's eye past them to the Virgin located further back in the space. The painting well represents the late style of Andrea.