Saints John the Baptist and Matthew

Bicci di Lorenzo's Saints John the Baptist and Matthew, painted around 1433 for the Metropolitan Museum, pairs the Precursor of Christ with the tax-collector-turned-evangelist. Bicci's workshop was one of the most productive in Florence, supplying a constant stream of devotional panels to churches and private clients. This work belongs to the Early Renaissance, the transformative period in European art when painters first applied mathematical perspective, naturalistic figure modeling, and archaeological interest in antiquity to the inherited traditions of medieval devotional painting. The tension between Gothic grace and Renaissance structure gives art of this period a distinctive energy.

The two saints stand with their identifying attributes in a balanced composition, rendered in Bicci di Lorenzo's reliable workshop manner with clear drawing, bright colors, and the gold ground standard in conservative Florentine devotional painting.