Child Jesus blessing among angels

Mino da Fiesole
carved marble
1473

The marble reredos in the Vibii family chapel has an inscription naming the person who commissioned it, the well-known jurist Baglione dei Montevibiani, and the date it was executed. Vasari recorded this work and credited it to Mino da Fiesole, one of the leading personalities of the Florentine season of great sculpture during the Renaissance. Mino was sensitive to the influence of Bernardo Rossellino as well as that of Luca della Robbia and Desiderio da Settignano. He worked a great deal outside Florence, particularly in Naples and Rome, where he came into contact with Paolo Romano and Giovanni Dalmata. 

The central panel is of the Child Jesus in the act of blessing, flanked by four angels. This takes inspiration from the famous model of the Tabernacle by Desiderio da Settignano in San Lorenzo in Florence, 1461. The two saints on the side panels, St. Jerome, who is striking his breast, and St. John the Baptist, are placed in valvate mock niches. The vertical structures, the framing and the architrave are decorated with a full selection of acorns, garlands and putti, or cherubs. This is typical of Florentine Renaissance taste, of which the reredos of San Pietro and the tabernacle of Monteluce, attributed to Francesco di Simone Ferrucci (1483), are singular examples in Perugia.