This panel, evidently the main element of a small tabernacle, has been convincingly attributed to the Clarisse Master, so named from the panel of Christ and the Virgin enthroned in the Convento delle Clarisse, Siena (Edward B. Garrison, Italian Romanesque Panel Painting, Florence, 1949, no. 161, where dated 1285-95). Close compositional parallels have been noted for the face of the Madonna in the Kress Madonna and Child with Four Saints, in the Brooks Memorial Art Gallery, Memphis and for the Crucifixion in the triptych in the Czartoryski Museum, Cracow (J.H. Stubblebine, Guido da Siena, Princeton, 1964, nos. XVII and XXII)
The Clarisse Master has been plausibly identified as Rinaldo, documented in Siena in 1274-80, who supplied a Biccherna cover of 1278, now in Berlin. On the basis of the small group of works attributable to him, the Master can be considered as perhaps the most refined of the artists who emerged in the following of Guido da Siena and thus as a key figure in Sienese painting at the time of the emergence of Duccio.
We are grateful to Everett Fahy for confirming the attribution.