The Visitation with Saint Nicholas and Saint Anthony Abbot

The central scene of the eccentric Florentine artist Piero di Cosimo's Visitation depicts the meeting of the Virgin Mary and the elderly Saint Elizabeth, the mother of John the Baptist. Saint Nicholas on the left, identified by his attribute of three gold balls alluding to his charity towards the daughters of an impoverished nobleman, and Saint Anthony Abbot on the right, identified by his cane, bell and ever-present pig, sit in the foreground as studious witnesses to the event. Additional scenes relating to the birth of Christ are depicted in the background: the Annunciation painted on a distant church wall, the Nativity and Adoration of the Shepherds on the left, and the Massacre of the Innocents in the middle ground.

Piero's Visitation has an unbroken history, having been first described in 1550 by the artist-biographer Giorgio Vasari in his Lives of the Artists as an altarpiece painted for the Capponi family chapel in the church of Santo Spirito in Florence. The heightened realism of the painting probably has its source in Flemish art, in vogue in Florence at the time. Piero's composition, with a main central group and a saint on either side, recalls the traditional triptych format. However, its pyramidal quality, with the saints forming a base and the heads of Mary and Elizabeth as the apex, reflects the influence of recent work by Leonardo da Vinci.