Florentine School, circa 1380

Professor Miklòs Boskovits suggested that this panel is close to the Master of the Ashmolean Predella at the time of the 2006 sale. The artist, who worked in both the Orcagna and the Jacopo di Cione workshops before setting up on his own, was named after a predella panel of the Birth of the Virgin, in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford (see C. Lloyd, A catalogue of the Earlier Italian Paintings in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, 1977, pp. 137-9, pl. 96). The present panel can be instructively compared to The Littleton Pilaster Saints, attributed to Jacopo di Cione and his workshop, formerly in the collection of William Young Ottley, and now in the National Gallery, London.