The Tabernacolo del Mercatale
Although the altarpiece he painted in 1495 for the church of San Francesco al Palco has unfortunately emigrated to the Alte Pinakotek of Munich, two other masterpieces of Filippino remain in Prato.

In the Wall Painting Museum of San Domenico his precious Tabernacolo del Mercatale, frescoed in 1498 has been temporarily installed, while restoration of the City Museum is being completed. As a young man, the poet Gabriele D’Annunzio admired it, mentioning it in The cities of silence: “Filippino, in that corner of the marketplace, how many times I glimpsed your saints behind the radiant glass of the tabernacle, like the flowers of an angelic garden!”. The fresco, which was detached after severe damage was caused by an air raid in 1944, has a scalloped structure and, at the back, standing before a sarcophagus in archeological style adorned with harpies, the lovely Madonna with Child (her robe has lost its original azure tint); in the intrados with its grotesque vault, pairs of saints are painted in full figure: St. Anthony the Abbot – stocky and gruff – and St.  Margaret – refined in the pattern and colors of the robes -, and opposite them  St. Catherine of Alessandria and St. Stephen – youthful figures of touching beauty. back >>