The central panel of this important Sienese school altarpiece dates from the last quarter of the 15th century. It shows the Virgin with the naked Child standing on his mother’s knees, sucking the index finger of his right hand. Three angels surround this central group. Two stand on the right and support the Infant Christ. The two side panels each depict two saints.

Some elements of the composition seem slightly archaic for their time, for instance the Gothic style of the garments and the sense that figures float in front of the monochrome gold background. Viewers are also struck by the distinctly rounded shape of the heads, which seem very large in relation to the bodies, by the obvious preparatory sketch, and by the affected, almost ugly, faces of the angels. These characteristics suggest a link between our unsigned painting and a triptych signed by Giacomo del Pisano which is kept at the Dublin National Gallery.

We know nothing about the life of this painter, and no other signed painting has been recorded. Some suppose that he may have worked in the workshop of Giovanni di Paolo (ca. 1403-1482) from around 1470, as there seem to be many parallels in their styles. Di Paolo’s religious paintings also express the mystical intensity and conservative style typical of Gothic decorative painting in spite of the tendency towards scientific naturalism and the classical humanism that was gradually spreading in 15th-century Tuscan art.

Acquired from a Luxembourg collector in 1941 for Hermann Göring’s private collection and seized by the Allies at the end of the war in the Altaussee salt mine, the triptych was later returned to Luxembourg.