Madonna and Child with Six Saints

Description

This religious panel painting shows a group of saints venerating a Madonna and Child seated on a body of clouds, surrounded by a frame of cherubic figures. The artist, an early Renaissance painter working in Florence named Tommaso del Mazza, included among the saints the rarely depicted St. Verdiana, represented at the bottom right of the painting as a nun holding a basket. The thirteenth-century saint is shown with two snakes, her distinguishing attribute, which recall her life as a recluse tormented by serpents.