The Madonna and Child surrounded by Saints John the Baptist, Catherine of Alexandria, Francis of Assisi and Bartholomew and other saints, with the Crucifixion above

We are grateful to Miclós Boscovits for confirming the attribution, on the basis of photographs; he considers it to be an early work by the artist.

Retiring in 1872 after representing the Rothschild bank in Turin, Baron Horace de Landau devoted himself to his love of books and works of art, buying numerous paintings, sculptures, tapestries, antique furniture and precious objects. On the death of the Baron in 1903, his niece, Jenny Ellenberger, who married Hugo Finaly, inherited his fortune. Sharing her uncle's passion for books, the couple entertained several celebrated authors of the belle époque, including Proust, Anatole France and D'Annunzio. Their son Horace, who was forced to leave Paris during the war and became a refugee in New York, died in 1945. The inheritors decided to leave a large part of the library and the art collections to the city of Florence, on the condition that the collection was kept together. The city of Florence entrusted the collection to the National Library of Florence, which created the Landau-Finaly collection, catalogued in 1997. Other items, including this gold ground panel, were offered in a dedicated sale of objects and works of art from the Landau-Finaly collection in Florence in 1948.