3. Italian Painting (13-18th c.)

The three small panels depicting mendicant friars – two Franciscans and the founder of the Dominicans, whom also the Franciscans venerated – are fragments from the predella of an altarpiece that once stood in the Church of San Francesco in Fabriano. The other parts of the altarpiece are also known: the central panel (Coronation of the Virgin) and the lunette (Pietà) are in the Brera gallery in Milan, the Blessing Christ, once in the centre of the predella, and a fragment showing St. Onofrius are in the collection of the Castel Sant’Angelo in Rome, while two pieces, each showing three saints, were acquired by the Jacquemart-André Museum in Paris. According to the inscription in the main panel, the altarpiece is the work of Carlo Crivelli from 1493 – that is, his last known dated piece. Carlo studied in his native town Venice and in Padua, but later he had to flee from his homeland after a moral scandal. He then worked in Dalmatia and in the Marches, painting his works in a highly refined, decorative, dry style which he often spiced with mild irony. Although he adjusted his pictures to the conservative taste of his commissioners, he also paid close attention to the achievements of his contemporaries. In these works, for example, the saints appear in an illusionistically painted Renaissance architectural setting.