![Detail from Jacopo di Cione's Triptych](https://cmsadmin.rct.uk/sites/default/files/half-height-lead-image/trail/Italian%20altarpieces%20half%20height.jpg)
Italian Altarpieces in the Royal Collection: 1300-1500
Prince Albert's taste in early Italian art marked him out amongst collectors
A Triptych: The Coronation, Nativity and Crucifixion
c. 1365-70RCIN 403483
Another work which hung in the Prince's Writing and Dressing Room was this triptych, believed to have been created in Florence. It tells the story of the life of the Virgin Mary. The Annunciation - the moment in which Mary learns she is to expect God's son - plays out across the top tier, with the kneeling Angel Gabriel appearing on the left wing, and the Virgin on the right wing. Also depicted upon the left-hand wing is a Nativity scene where, in the background, a shepherd can be seen receiving the news from an angel that Christ has been born. On the right-hand wing, Mary attends Jesus' crucifixion along with the grief-stricken John the Evangelist. At the centre, Mary is crowned Queen of Heaven by Christ, surrounded by a dense crowd of standing Saints.
This triptych is attributed to the workshop of the fourteenth-century Florentine artist, Jacopo di Cione. Among Jacopo's brothers numbered the Florentine master Andrea di Cione (known as Orcagna), as well as the accomplished painter Nardo, and Matteo, a stone-mason.