He is followed by a group including several leading Florentine artistic figures of the day, including his pupil Giotto, the poet Dante Alighieri (leaning on the wall at right), the architect Arnolfo di Cambio,[a] the painters Gaddo Gaddi, Andrea Tafi, Buonamico Buffalmacco and Simone Memmi; the sculptor Nicola Pisano,[6] and on horseback at the right edge of the image, the King of Naples, Charles of Anjou.

[7] Both the Rucellai Madonna and a similar work that is correctly attributed to Cimabue, the Santa Trinita Maestà, are displayed at the Uffizi Gallery in Florence.

The painting was an immediate success for Leighton when he presented it at the 1855 summer exhibition of the Royal Academy of Arts in London where it received near-universal acclaim.

"[2] The English artist Dante Gabriel Rossetti wrote that the work proved Leighton's "great power of rich arrangement.

"[9] His brother, the art critic and writer William Rossetti, was not as enchanted: "His picture has largeness, but not greatness; style, but not intensity; design rather than thought; arrangement rather than conception: it is individual, not specially original.