Saint Apollonia

The altarpiece, commissioned by the friars and laity of the church of Sant'Agostino in Borgo San Sepolcro, must have been essentially complete by November 1469, and Piero must have received a final payment for it before 21 May 1470; see James R. Banker, "Piero della Francesca's S. Agostino Altarpiece: Some New Documents," The Burlington Magazine 129 (1987): 645-651. Vasari saw the polyptych, still complete, on the main altar of the church sometime before 1550 (Giorgio Vasari, Le vite de' piu eccellenti ittori, scultori e architettori, Florence, 1550: 362).

The Augustinians moved to the Pieve di Santa Maria on 16 April 1555. It is known that "avevano portato con se le Reliquie...[and] le pitture portatili" ("they took with them the relics and movable pictures"), and they claimed the patronage rights of the altars of their former church (see Ercole Agnoletti, Memorie religiose inedite di Sansepolcro, Sansepolcro, 1970: 27-30). The literature was unaware for a long time that the polyptych was transferred to the new church, and Milanesi (in Vasari, Milanesi ed., 2:493 notes 2 and 3), as well as others (Giovanni Felice Pichi, La vita e le opera di Piero della Francesca, Sansepolcro, 1892: 101-108; Adolfo Venturi, Storia dell'arte italiana, 11 vols. in 25 parts, Milan, 1901-1940: 7 part 2(1913):460, thought that the Peruginesque Assumption of the Virgin, placed on the main altar of the church of Santa Chiara (the original church of Sant'Agostino) in Sansepolcro, was the central element of Piero's polyptych. Tancred Borenius ("Professor Venturi on Quattrocento Painting," The Burlington Magazine 29 [1916]: 162 n. 4) corrected the error; however, even afterward the smaller panels from that complex continued to be identified as the "quadretti in tavola, alcuni de' quali sembrano di mano di Piero della Francesca" ("small panel pictures, some of which seem to be from the hand of Piero della Francesca") described by Giacomo Mancini (Istruzione storico-pittorica per visitare le chiese e palazzi di Citta di Castello: colle memorie di alcuni artefici del disegno..., 2 vols., Perugia, 1832: 2:272) as being in the choir of the nuns of Santa Chiara. Thus Eugenio Battisti (Piero della Francesca, 2 vols., Milan, 1971: 2:45), and more recently Franco Polcri (Due ritrovamenti d'archivio a Sansepolcro, Sansepolcro, 1990: 3-5, and Il Polittico Agostiniano di Piero della Francesca. Quaderni di Studi e Restauri del Museo Poldi Pezzoli, 2, Milan, 1996: 91) believe that parts of the altarpiece remained in the old church of the Augustinian friars, rededicated in 1555 to Santa Chiara.