Portrait of Pierantonio Bandini Baroncelli (on the reverse: the annunciation: The Virgin)

The Portrait of Pierantonio Bandini Baroncelli by the Master of the Baroncelli Portraits, painted in 1487 and now in the Uffizi Gallery, depicts a Florentine patrician whose family name connects him to the conspiracy and its bloody aftermath of the 1478 Pazzi conspiracy — the assassination attempt against Lorenzo and Giuliano de' Medici in the Florence Cathedral. Pierantonio Baroncelli belonged to a family caught in the turbulent currents of Florentine politics, and this portrait records his features at a critical moment in Florentine history. The anonymous master, named for this very painting and a companion portrait, worked in the tradition of Ghirlandaio's Florentine workshop and the Flemish-influenced secular portraiture that flourished in late fifteenth-century Florence. The reverse of the panel bears an Annunciation image, making it a diptych that combined the commemorative function of the portrait with a devotional image for private prayer.

The master renders the sitter in the Florentine three-quarter portrait format derived from Flemish convention, with precise attention to the sitter's features and the textures of his clothing. The combination of portrait and Annunciation on the reverse of the same panel reflects the Flemish practice of devotional diptychs in which secular commemoration and sacred devotion occupied the same physical object.