This article will attempt to place securely an important work of fourteenth-century Florentine painting by one of its greatest artists in its original social milieu and confraternal location, apply­ing several methodologies to accomplish this. It takes up the challenge first by addressing the style of the painter and by reviewing an often overlooked aspect of his career. It then examines the object in ques­tion within the historical development of its form and general content, aided by comparison with others of its type and with reference to the theological climate in which such artworks appeared. Subsequently, following a more detailed exploration of its content, the paper con­siders the results of this inquiry in light of what later documents as well as additional works of art proceeding from the same Florentine ambience affirm. Such a multifaceted approach is mandatory here, for documentation of the painting is entirely lacking for the first 510 years of its existence. Barring future archival discoveries, absolute certainty about the fortunes of the painting during that time will remain elusive. But the present investigation along the lines proposed will allow us to determine that one of Florence’s leading charitable confraternities was almost surely its original owner, and to unravel the meaning and pur­pose that the painting held for that organization’s members and the persons who commissioned the object.

Researchers should cite this work as follows:

• Levin, W. R., (2025), "The Bigallo Triptych: A Document of Confraternal Charity in Fourteenth-Century Florence", HSSCommons: (DOI: )

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1. Confraternitas

Original publication: Levin, William R. “The Bigallo Triptych: A Document of Confraternal Charity in Fourteenth-Century Florence.” Confraternitas 29 (1): 2018. 55-101. DOI: . This material has been re-published in an unmodified form on the Canadian HSS Commons with the permission of Iter Canada / Confraternitas. Copyright © the author(s). Their work is distributed by Confraternitas under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. For details, see https://creativecommons.org/licenses/.