Three altarpieces by Pier Francesco Foschi: patronage, context and function (with notes on assistants in the workshop of Botticelli).

Firenze, S. Spirito, Torrigiani chapel, Immaculate Conception with SS. Jerome, Augustine, Anselm and Bernard: 17-18 (fig. 1), 22, 26, 32. 'On November, 24, 1492 the nuns of Santa Monica, Florence had commissioned Agnolo di Domenico del Mazziere to complete a painting representing "three figures" for the chapel of the Crucifix in their church, begun and abandoned by Jacopo di Domenico di Papi before the latter had left for Rome several months previously. Del Mazziere was to receive four florins from the nuns for completing the picture' (p. 23). 'The altar of S. Nicholas of Tolentino in S. Spirito by Franciabiglio, Jacopo Sansovino and Nanni Unghero... Foschi's Resurrection in S. Spirito (fig. 12), generally thought to have been painted around 1537, when the chapel of the Resurrection in S. Spirito began to be officiated. The torso of Christ in the Resurrection is treated in much the same way as that of Christ in the Fivizzano Man of Sorrows. In borth these works, as in Foschi's Immaculate Conception of c. 1544-46 in the same Florentine church the soft chiaruscuro modelling derived from Sarto as starting to harden to a metallic sheen' (p.25-6).