Virgin and Child with Saints and Donors

At about 1490, the physician Jacopo Surian commissioned an altarpiece from Buora that included portraits of himself and his wife as supplicants before the Virgin’s throne. The saints flanking the throne are St James the Greater and St James the Less. The choice of the expensive medium of bronze is decidedly pretentious, as is the inscription on the base of the throne, which compares Surian with Aristotle and Galen.