Dossal

On 28 July 1464 Mino was inscribed in the Arte della Pietra in Florence, and he began to accept commissions from Florentines in the Medici circle. In 1464 Diotisalvi Neroni commissioned a marble altar in half relief with the Virgin and Child with Sts Leonard and Lawrence (Badia Fiorentina, Florence) for his family chapel in San Lorenzo, and he also had Mino carve his portrait (1464; Mus�e du Louvre, Paris). The altar was not completed in the four months stipulated in the contract, since in 1466, when Neroni was exiled from Florence, the marble was still in Mino’s possession; it was only in 1470 that he sold the completed altar to the Badia, Florence.

Within a Brunelleschian architectural frame, appropriate for the altar’s intended setting, the saints’ figures are shown frontally; the stylized linearity of the drapery, the inconsistencies of scale between the figures and the shifts in relief depth reflect the influence of Isaia da Pisa and other sculptors active in Rome, while the format and style are based on Early Christian ivories.