The unusual subject of this panel is not Biblical, but is probably drawn from an account in The Golden Legend. Simon the sorcerer had ingratiated himself with the Emperor Nero and, determined to prove his superiority to Peter, launched himself from a tower intending to ascend to Heaven. Peter, taught by Nero, commanded the demons supporting Simon to drop him, which they did. Here several stages in the story can be seen at once: in the background Simon launches himself from a scaffold (supported by demons) and in the centre foreground he lies dead on the ground. At the left the Emperor Nero sits enthroned and surrounded by soldiers, and at the right are the apostles Peter and Paul, with Peter gesturing to the sky.

This is a predella panel for the altarpiece of the Madonna with Six Saints (John the Baptist, Peter, Zenobius, Dominic, Jerome and Francis), originally painted in 1561-2 for the oratory of the Confraternity of San Marco, Florence, and the main part now in the National Gallery, London (NG283). The contract for the commission specified that Benozzo should paint the predella himself and implies that there should have been seven panels (presumably one for the Virgin and each of the six saints). There are five surviving panels (in various collections), which precisely make up the width of the main panel, suggesting that they were the only ones ever executed. They depict scenes from the life of the Virgin (Purification in the Philadelphia Museum of Art and obviously planned for the centre), and Saints John the Baptist (National Gallery of Art, Washington), Peter (this panel), Dominic (Brera, Milan) and Zenobius (Gemäldegalerie, Berlin). Saints Jerome and Francis had to do without. The composition of this panel is approximately reversed in another, larger and probably earlier predella-panel by Benozzo in the Metropolitan Museum, New York.

Inscribed (on the back): ‘Benozzo Gozzoli no. 60. / Judgement of Simon Magus