Meliore di Jacopo’s panel shows the Madonna seated on a throne with a high back covered with a fabric embroidered with geometric patterns in blue and red tones, wearing on her head a carved crown decorated with three circles in relief and adorned with a blue-green mantle, drapery minutely marked by refined graphisms and highlights. At her feet, resting on a fine cushion covered with embroidered fabric matching the throne, the Madonna wears highly original shoes with floral-patterned designs. On her lap she holds the Blessing Child with in his hand a scroll of parchment, that is, the chirograph of sin, on which is transcribed the martyrdom he will have to undergo to redeem humanity from original sin. The sacred image is introduced by two facing angels, dressed in oriental attire, floating in the spiritual space of the gold background.

In the past, the form of the panel had to undergo some reworking, and in the 18th century it was given a new frame, which was retained in the restoration documented in 1935 and removed in 1972, while leaving visible part of the surviving cymatium where traces of the original painting are still evident.

Shown at the Exhibition of the Treasure of Sacred Florence as a work of the 13th-century Florentine School, the panel was then attributed by E. B. Garrisono (1956) to the Master of Bagnano, formerly identified as Meliore di Jacopo by Longhi (1948), an artist documented as the “Best Painter” among the citizens of Florence who took part in the Battle of Montaperti in 1260, a field in which he met Coppo di Marcovaldo with whom he collaborated in the creation of The Last Judgment in the dome of the Baptistery of Florence, a mosaic executed between about 1260 and 1275. Thanks to the comparison with the dossal with Christ Blessing between the Virgin, John the Evangelist, Peter and Paul (Florence, Uffizi Galleries), dated 1271 and signed “Melior,” to the hand of this artist, apparently trained on the examples of the figurative culture of Lucca and Pisa, a nucleus of panels has been attributed, among which the dossal of the Pieve di S. Leolino in Panzano in Chianti, formerly believed to be by the Master of Magdalene and traced back to him by more recent critics (Tartuferi, 1986; Proto Pisani, 2001) stands out.