Panciatichi Holy Family

Preparatory drawings for the work are in the Uffizi's Gabinetto dei Disegni e delle Stampe (n. 6639F0) and (with variations) in the Phillips collection in London.

[1][2] It may have been one of two "large paintings of Our Lady with other figures, beautiful and marvellous" which Vasari's Lives of the Artists mentions as being produced by Bronzino for Bartolomeo Panciatichi, chamberlain to Cosimo I de' Medici.

A few years later Vincenzo Borghini mentioned "two paintings of the Glorified Virgin with other very beautiful figures" in the Panciatichi household.

The Panciatichi link is supported by the flag with their coat of arms flying from a turret in the top left background.

The work's dating is more complex, but is thought to be close to the same artist's execution of portraits of Lucrezia and Bartolomeo, two members of the Panciatichi family, that is 1541, the year of the family's admission to the Accademia fiorentina.