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Niccolò di
Buonaccorso
unknown - 1388
Madonna and Child
1387
Tempera and gold on wood
60 x 23 in.
This painting was originally the central panel of a large altarpiece in the church of Santa Margherita in Costalpino, outside Siena. Its original frame carried the following inscription: "NICHOLAUS: BONACHURSI. ME PINXIT. A. DNI. 1387" (Niccolò di Buonaccorso painted me in the year of the Lord 1387). Identification of Madonna and Child as a work by Niccolò di Buonaccorso, one of the most accomplished masters active in Siena in the last third of the fourteenth century, has enabled several other works of monumental scale to be attributed to him. The presence of a nun dressed in a black, possibly Augustinian habit among the small donors at the feet of St. Lawrence suggests that this triptych originally may have been commissioned for an important female community of that order in Siena or its environs.