Polittico del Maestro di Staffolo

The Master of Staffolo's Polittico del Maestro di Staffolo (Polyptych), painted around 1445 and now in the Chiesa di Sant'Egidio (still in its original church setting in Staffolo), is an unusually well-preserved example of an Italian polyptych altarpiece that has never left the church for which it was made — a rarity in an era when most altarpieces of this date have been separated from their original contexts and dispersed into museum collections. The survival of the altarpiece in situ makes it one of the most contextually intact examples of fifteenth-century Marche devotional art.

Tempera on panel with gold ground in the traditional polyptych format. The central Madonna and Child are flanked by saints in Gothic arch-framed compartments. The figures are rendered with the earnest simplicity of a painter serving local devotional needs in a small Marche parish church.