Piazza Madonna
altarpiece by Andrea del Verrocchio and his workshop
The Piazza Madonna (Italian - Madonna di Piazza) is a tempera on panel painting, dating to 1474-1486 and held in Pistoia Cathedral.
It was commissioned from Andrea del Verrocchio in 1474 as an altarpiece for the oratory of the Madonna di Piazza (the "Virgin of the Square"). It was intended to commemorate bishop Donato de' Medici, whose name saint Donatus of Fiesole stands to the right, with Florence's patron saint John the Baptist to the left. It was painted in two parts, with heavy involvement from Verrochio's studio assistants, particularly Lorenzo di Credi. The first part was finished in 1479, but the second phase was postponed until 1485 thanks to delays in payment. The painting was finally completed in 1486.
18th century local historians attributed the work to Leonardo da Vinci, based on a note made by the artist on a folio now in the Uffizi which records that in the month of "...bre" 1478 he began "two Virgin Maries", one of which is usually identified as the Garofano Madonna. Today Leonardo, twenty-two in 1474, is thought to have had no involvement in the painting of the Piazza Madonna beyond one compartment of the predella which corresponds to an autograph drawing of a head of the Virgin by him - that panel is now in the Louvre and the drawing is no. 438 E in the Gabinetto dei Disegni e delle Stampe of the Uffizi.
The painting originally had a predella, whose panels are now dispersed among several museums.
The public source identifies “Piazza Madonna” as altarpiece by Andrea del Verrocchio and his workshop. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Piazza, Madonna and altarpiece.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 17, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q3842726. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1474, 1486, 1479 and 1485.
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This entry incorporates text from “Piazza Madonna” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.