It is first recorded in 1538–1539 in the Dell'Orafo chapel in the Church of Santo Spirito in Siena. Vasari's Lives of the Artists particularly praised the saints' clothes in the work. Its predella was removed and is now mostly lost, though one panel survives in the Kress collection in the Philbrook Museum of Art and two were in the Scharf Collection in London and are now in the Getty Museum. Two sketches survive in the Gabinetto dei Disegni e delle Stampe of the Uffizi, in Florence.
The painting's dimensions are 347 by 225 cm. Its tone is influenced by the Madonna of the Baldacchino of Raphael and the works of Fra Bartolomeo. What belongs to Beccafumi is the particular luminous and chromatic orchestration, made of an alternation between areas of deep shadow and illuminated ones, as well as soft and iridescent colors.[1]
References
^(in Italian) Anna Maria Francini Ciaranfi, Beccafumi, Sadea Editore/Sansoni, Firenze 1967 (Italian)