The Madonna and Child with Saints Catherine of Alexandria, John the Baptist, Anthony the Great and a female saint

We are grateful to Mr. Everett Fahy for suggesting the attribution to Francesco d'Antonio Zacchi da Viterbo, il Balletta, having examined the painting in person. Recorded as active in Viterbo between 1430 and 1464, Balletta worked principally in the Gothic idiom and his oeuvre shows particularly strong affinities with the late Gothic painting of Sienese artists such as Bartolo di Fredi and Taddeo di Bartolo, whose influence can be seen in the elaborate tooling of the robes of the Madonna and Christ Child in the present work. The Madonna and Child are similar in posture and facial type to the same two figures in Balletta's large polyptych of 1441 in the church of San Giovanni in Zoccoli, Viterbo.