The Baptism of Christ: Main Tier Central Panel

Niccolò di Pietro Gerini was among the most prolific late Trecento painters in Florence, working in a conservative Giottesque idiom even as the International Gothic style gained ground. This central panel of a baptism altarpiece served the devotional program of a Florentine church, depicting the sacramental moment with hieratic solemnity. The work demonstrates how Florentine workshops maintained continuity with the compositional formulas established by Giotto's followers well into the 1380s.

Executed in egg tempera on a poplar panel with tooled gold ground and incised haloes. The figures are modeled with careful chiaroscuro in the Giottesque tradition, and the composition is symmetrically anchored by the central baptismal scene.