Virgin and Child with Saints

The panel is also called Madonna del Pergolato.

Originating from the Chapel of St Sabinus in Orvieto Cathedral, this altarpiece is one of the most important paintings of the fifteenth-century Umbrian School. From 1445 onwards, Giovanni Boccati worked mainly in Perugia and was influenced partly by the Florentine masters Benozzo Gozzoli and Filippo Lippi but also by Piero della Francesca. He went on to develop a style of his own in which the interpretation is more lyrical and the means of expression more naive and immediate than those of his masters. His compositions, however, remained traditional, and in many of his paintings we find only slight variations of the arrangement seen in this picture.

In this altarpiece the assembly of saints and angels surrounding the Virgin are placed under a pergola - hence the name given to the work. The back of the Virgin’s throne is replaced by a leafy exedra, but the throne itself is of wood, decorated with certosina intarsia; the lateral walls and benches are marble, rendered in a uniform pink typical of the palette of Filippo Lippi.