Summary: On the occasion of its restoration and temporary exhibition in Montefalco, the panel of the Madonna of the Girdle – executed in 1450 by the Florentine painter Benozzo Gozzoli (1420/21-1497) for the Church of San Fortunato in Montefalco and moved in 1848 to the Vatican collections – was analyzed under the various historic/artistic, iconographic and preservative aspects, identifying those particular qualities that make it unique. The altarpiece was ahead of its time, both for its square shape (chosen instead of the traditional triptych common in Umbria in 1450), in the single space of which the Blessed Virgin is taken up into heaven while offering her belt to Saint Thomas, and for the advanced design of the wooden structure, which made the panel’s excellent state of preservation possible. The very high pictorial quality of the painting – in the up-to-date Renaissance design of the altarpiece, in the graceful splendor of the Virgin and angels, as well as in the miniaturistic attention to detail, evidence of a style still rooted in the late Gothic – allows us to recognize the young Benozzo as the true heir of Fra Angelico, with whom he had worked in the Niccoline Chapel in the Vatican.

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