The Madonna and Child with Saints Jerome and John the Baptist

Neri di Bicci was born into a family of painters whose workshop can be traced back three generations through Neri's father, Bicci di Lorenzo, to his grandfather, Lorenzo di Bicci. Enrolled in the Compagnia di San Luca in 1434, Neri probably did not take control of the family workshop until his father's death in 1452. The following year he began keeping a workshop diary, in which he carefully detailed his professional and financial activity for more than twenty years. This record, known as the Ricordanze, is the most extensive surviving document relating to a fifteenth-century painter and his workshop practice, and is remarkably revealing. Through the Ricordanze readers come to understand Neri as a practical businessman who worked tirelessly to increase his output and decrease his costs, becoming so successful that by 1458 he was forced to rent a second workshop near the Porta Rossa in the center of Florence. He worked in fresco and on panel, painted wooden sculptures, and even developed a thriving market for low-relief plaster tabernacles which he often provided in orders of half a dozen or more. The Ricordanze also provides a fascinating account of Neri's collaboration and influence, listing contemporaries with whom he worked, including the sculptor Desiderio da Settignano, as well as numerous pupils who passed through his workshop, among whom can be counted Cosimo Rosselli and Benedetto di Domenico d'Andrea.
The present work is a charming representative example of the private devotional tabernacles whose production kept Neri so busy. With echoes of Piero della Francesca, Fra Filippo Lippi and even Domenico Veneziano, the physical modeling and facial features of the figures here are typical of Neri's output. In the foreground the Christ child reaches up eagerly towards his mother, who presses her cheek tenderly against that of her son. Behind them, presented as hermits, stand Saints Jerome and John the Baptist, whose interaction is just as gentle and sweet. Saint Jerome touches his chest in a symbol of penitence and cradles a rosary between the thumb and forefinger of his other hand, perhaps to remind viewers of the message painted in gold across the bottom edge of the picture support - remarkably, this work is preserved in its original fifteenth century frame, complete with the inscription 'REGINA COELI LAETARE ALLELUIA QMPA'. This phrase repeats the first line of an ancient Marian hymn, and translates 'Queen of Heaven, rejoice, hallelujah'. The 'QMPA', an acronym for the second line of the hymn ('Quia Quem meruisti portare, alleluia') translates 'For He whom you did merit to bear, hallelujah' and alludes to the power of the Virgin Mary as intercessor on behalf of devotees who say prayers in her name.