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Vasari wrote with admiration about the high altar of Santa Maria Novella in Florence, Ghirlandaio's last work, which was finished by his pupils. Until 1804 it stood in its original place, and then was dismembered and scattered in various collections all over Europe. The central piece depicting the Madonna and saints in a ring of cherubs, together with the wings portraying St Catherine and St Lawrence, is now in the Alte Pinakothek in Munich, the Resurrection, which was, according to Vasari, originally on the back of the central panel and was completed by Ghirlandaio's brothers Benedetto and Davidde, found its way from Florence to the Berlin-Dahlem Museum. The wings representing St Vincent and St Anthony were also in the Berlin-Dahlem Museum, but they were destroyed in 1945, during the war.
Today we cannot exactly reconstruct the original form of the altar. Traditionally all the panels in Berlin are regarded as having belonged to the back of the altar, but while Vasari mentions six wings describing the front of altarpiece, he does not mention such on the back.Thus the supposition that the saints in Munich and Berlin, together with the St Stephen in Budapest and with St Peter the Martyr, earlier in a private collection in Paris, all decorated the front of the altar seems justified.
The painting was executed by Ghirlandaio and his workshop.
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