It is unclear whether the present picture is complete in itself or was the central section of a larger field, extending to either side, or part of a polyptych: we are unlikely to know more until and unless technical examination is undertaken.

The arrangement of the Virgin and Child with St John is closely based on the central group in Filippino Lippi’s altarpiece in the Nerli chapel in Santo Spirito, Florence (160 x 180 cm), datable to c.1493–5, a date that provides a terminus post quem for the present picture. The angels either side of the Virgin, however, are additions not found in the Santo Spirito panel which depicts the Virgin, Child and St John between SS Martin of Tours and Catherine who present the kneeling donors. It would need to be checked by overlays but if, as the present writer suspects, the figures in the Mells panel and the Santo Spirito panel are the same size, it would imply that the painter of the Mells panel either had access to Filippino’s cartoon or made a tracing of the central group from Filippino’s painting. This in turn would suggest that he was a pupil or close associate of Filippino, working in his shop, although it cannot entirely be ruled out that the painter might simply have obtained the cartoon after Filippino’s death in 1504. However, if the panel does post-date 1504, it would be attributable to a retardataire – and probably provincial – master, for Filippino’s style dropped from favour soon after his death. It is more probable that the painting was produced within Filippino’s lifetime: it might even have been a (partial) repetition licensed by Filippino himself but it should be noted that several derivations exist of the central group of the Santo Spirito altarpiece.

It is conjectural whether the painter of the Mells panel was a direct pupil of Filippino; in the opinion of the present writer, he is more likely to have been a semi-independent –  and possibly short-term – associate. The painting’s colour-range, with a strong emphasis on the articulating power of the Virgin’s scarf, and the density of handling suggest a relation to the work of another important painter active in Florence at this time: Lorenzo di Credi. The types of the angels at either side have some similarity with the types of Filippino, for example the head of Christ in the Musée des Beaux-Arts of Besançon, but they also remind the present writer of the work of Piero di Cosimo.

Concerning Piero di Cosimo, Dr Laurence Kanter has contributed a fascinating observation: ‘Unmistakably like Piero – and like no one else before Pontormo – this painter works as though he is looking into a convex mirror, exaggerating the forward progression of volumes near the center of his field of focus and exaggerating the recession of forms around the edges’.¹ This phenomenon implies that the painter had an intellectual and experimental interest in perspectival distortion of a wide-angle kind and this, in due course, may help identify him.

A final thought is whether this painter might be, or might be close to, an artist who operated in Lucca, known as the Master of the Lathrop Tondo, but the connections do not seem close enough to warrant an attribution to him. Christopher Daly has reported to the present writer that a photograph of the Mells picture was filed by the late Everett Fahy with pictures by a painter whom Fahy dubbed the Master of the Holden Tondo and whom he situated among the followers of Domenico Ghirlandaio. Dr Fahy’s knowledge of this area was profound and among those reproductions seen by the present writer, there are certainly some similarities with the work of this master; but the person who painted the Mells panel is closer to Filippino – particularly obviously in the decorated and decorative draperies, which wind around the figure and move in complex ways – rather than to the more sober Ghirlandaio.² For now, the present writer would attribute the painting to an artist in the circle of Filippino Lippi.