This lively, yet lyrical, depiction of the Madonna and Child with Saint John the Baptist is almost certainly the painting described on 20 December 1594 in Boscoli's libro dei conti, or record book, as “Our Lady with the child in her arms presenting the cross to Saint John.”¹ The entry records the price of forty-two lire paid for the painting (along with a second work) by “Master Luca di…Potenti,” a carpenter from Borgo San Jacopo in Florence. Rendered with a chromatic alchemy characteristic of Boscoli’s works, the panel offers a potent example of the late Florentine mannerism. He synthesizes various artistic sources, self-conciously emulating paintings by his fellow Florentine painters. As the present composition attests, works by Andrea del Sarto, Jacopo Pontormo, and Rosso Fiorentino remained crucial touchpoints in the city's artistic imagination throughout the sixteenth century.

The three figures are silhouetted against a dark background that emphasizes the play of light and shadow on their forms and enhances the figures' plasticity. The infant Christ holds one end of a ribbon bearing the inscription, “ECCE AGN[US] DEI,” while Saint John the Baptist presents him with an apple, a symbol of Eve's original sin, for which Christ will sacrifice his own life. The present composition bears striking similarities with Boscoli's Holy Family with Saints Elizabeth and John the Baptist, in the Luzzetti collects ion, Florence.²

¹ Boscoli's Libro dei Conti, reproduced in D. Heikamp 1963, fol. 11v: “Maestro Luca di…Potenti, legnaiolo, al presente in borgho Soto Jacopo sopr’Arno deve dare questo di 20 di dicembre 1594 lire quaranta dua, tanti sono per avere auto da mme dua tele di un bracc[i]o e terzo incircha, dipintovi drento in una la nostra Donna col putto in collo che presenta la croce a San Giovannino, ne l’altra un Cristo morto sopra del sepolcro abracc[i]ato da la Nostra Donna, santa Maria Maddalena che li bac[i]a la mano e Nicchodemo che lo regge sotto le braccia; dati a lui propio.”

² See N. Bastogi 2008, pp. 229-230, cat. no. 3.