Madonna and Child Enthroned with Saints

Matteo di Pacino, active in Florence during the second half of the fourteenth century, was a follower of the great Orcagna workshop tradition. This Madonna and Child Enthroned with Saints from around 1385 reflects the conservative Florentine devotional style that persisted after the Black Death, emphasizing hieratic frontality and rich ornamentation over the naturalism pioneered by Giotto decades earlier. Now at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, it served as an altarpiece for private devotion or a small chapel.

Executed in egg tempera and gold leaf on panel, the work features the elaborate tooled gold ground and punch-work halos characteristic of late Trecento Florentine painting. Matteo's figures display solid, rounded forms with careful drapery folds rendered through systematic hatching.