Saints Peter and Paul; and Saints John and Anthony Abbot

First published by Miklós Boskovits (loc. cit.), who significantly enlarged the corpus of the artist's work, and studied most recently by Milvia Bollati, these accomplished panels evidently formed part of a major altarpiece by Niccolò di Tommaso, most likely with a central panel depicting an enthroned Madonna and Child. One of the more successful Florentine painters of the mid-trecento, Niccolò was influenced at the outset of his career by Maso di Banco and Nardo di Cione and was clearly an associate of the latter, witnessing his will in 1365. Bollati rightly senses in the grandeur of the forms in these panels, as well as in the plausibility and plasticity of their modelling, evidence of the painter's debt to Nardo. She proposes a date in the 1360s, thus earlier than the artist's first dated works: a triptych for the church of Sant'Antonio Abate in Foria of 1371 (Museo di Capodimonte, Naples) and the frescoes of the following year at the Convento del Tau, Pistoia. More specifically, she compares the Saint Paul with the panel of the same saint in the Museo Horne, Florence, which is in turn closely related to the triptych depicting the Mystic Marriage of Saint Catherine at the Museo Fesch, Ajaccio.