Madonna della Candeletta

This tall panel once sat at the heart of something much larger, the high altarpiece of the cathedral in Camerino, a small town in the hills of the Marche, ordered in 1488. Crivelli signed it proudly as a knight, a title Ferdinand of Aragon had granted him around 1490. Then the story turns on disaster. An earthquake wrecked the Camerino cathedral in 1799 and the great polyptych came apart. When Napoleon was assembling his new gallery in Milan, this central Madonna was the piece he wanted, and it has stayed there ever since. Look low, just to the left of the signature, for the thin unlit candle that gives the picture its name.